Class £^/g4
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THE
SCOTCH-IRISH
IN
AMERICA.
BY
SAMUEL SWETT GREEN
THE
SCOTCH-IKISH
AMERICA.
V
SAMUEL SWETT GREEN.
a paper read as the report of the council of the american
Antiquarian Society, at the Semi-Annual Meeting, April 24,
1895, with Correspondence called out by the paper.
Wovrcatrv, Pa,$^., m. ^. ^.
P Jl E S S OF CHARLES HAMILTON
311 MAIN STREET.
1895.
THE SCOTCH-IIUSH IN AMEEICA.'
A TRIBUTE is due from the Puritan to the Scotch-Irishmcan,^
and it is becoming in this Society, which has its headquar-
ters in the heart of New England, to render that tribute.
The story of the Scotsmen who swaruied across the nar-
row body of water which separates Scotland from Ireland, in
the seventeenth century, and who came to America in the
eighteenth century, in large numbers, is of perennial inter-
est. For hundreds of years before the beginning of the
seventeenth century the Scot had been going forth contin-
ually over Europe in search of adventure and gain. As a
rule, says one who knows him well, "he turned, his steps
where fighting was to be had, and the pay for killing
was reasonably good." ^ The English wars had made his
countrymen poor, but they had also made them a nation of
soldiers.
Remember the "Scotch Archers" and the "Scotch
Guardsmen" of France, and the delightful story of Quentin
Durward, by Sir Walter Scott. Call to mind the "Scots
Brigade," which dealt such hard blows in the contest in
Holland with the splendid Spanish infantry which Parma
and Spinola led, and recall the pikemen of the great
Gustavus. The Scots were in the vanguard of many a
' For acknowledgments regarding llie sources of information contained in
this paper, not made in footnotes, read the Bibliographical note at its end.
" The Scotch-Irisli, as 1 understand the meaning of the term, are Scotchmen
who emigrated to Ireland and such descendants of these emigrants as had not
through intermarriage with the Irish proper, or others, lost their Scotch char-
acteristics. Both emigrants and their descendants, If they remained long iu
Ireland, experienced certain changes, apart from those which an; brought
about by mixture of blood, through the iutlueuce of new surroundings.
3 Harrison, John. The Scot in Ulster, p. I.
European host. Their activity showed itself in trade also.
"In the Hanse towns and from the Baltic to the Mediter-
ranean every busy centre and trading town knows the canny
Scot.-'i
The adventurous spirit of the Scotsman had hitherto
shown itself in war and in trade ; it is now to show itself in
colonization. Our interest to-day is in the colonies which
Scotchmen established in the north of Ireland in the seven-
teenth century, and in the great emigration from those colo-
nies to America in the eighteenth century. Large tracts of
land in Ulster had been laid waste, and James the First of
England formed plans for peopling them with colonies of
Englishmen and Scotchmen. Hugh Montgomery, the laird
of Braidstane, afterwards Lord Montgomery of the Ards,
and James Hamilton, afterwards Viscount Clandeboye (a
title now borne by his descendant, the Marquis of Duficrin
and Ava, formerly Governor-General of Canada and Vice-
roy of India, who as an Irish baron is Lord DufFerin and
Clandeboye), led colonies into the northern portion of
County Down in 1606. About the same time plantations,
which afterwards became peculiarly Scottish, were made
in Antrim. Then followed what is known as the "Great
plantation," in 1610. Bead Scott's Fortunes of Nigel, it has
been said, and " you see the poverty of the old land north
of the Tweed, and the neediness of the flock of supplicants
who followed James to London." That neediness and the
poverty of their land led Scotsmen to Ireland, also.
"The plantations in County Down and County Antrim,
thorough as they were as far as they went, were limited in
scope, in comparison with the ' Great plantation in Ulster'
for which James I.'s reign will be forever remembered in
Ireland."-
Early in the seventeenth century " all northern Ireland,
ij. S. Maclutosh in The Making of the Ulsterman, Second Scotch-Irish
Congress, p. 89.
2Harrisou,p. 34.
■ — Londonderry, Donegal, Tyrone, Cavan, Armagh, and
Fermanagh, — passed at one fell swoop into the hands of the
crown." 1 These lands James proceeded to people with Eng-
lishmen and Scotchmen, as he had before planted Scottish
and English colonies in Down and Antrim. Sir William
Petty states, "that a very large emigration had taken place
from Scotland after Cromwell settled the country in 1652."^
"He takes the total population" of Ireland in 1672 "at
1,100,000, and calculates that 800,000 were Irish, 200,000
English, and 100,000 Scots. Of course the English were
scattered all over Ireland, the Scots concentrated in
Ulster."^ Lecky says that "for some years after the
Revolution," meaning, of course, the English Revolution
of 1688, "a steady stream of Scotch Presbyterians had
poured into the country, attracted by the cheapness of
the farms and by the new openings for trade." "^ The end
of the seventeenth century probably saw the last of the
large emigration of Scots into Ulster,
The quiet of the Scotch immigrants was disturbed by
various events durins: the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies. War disturbed their quiet. The Irish rebellion of
1641 caused them much suffering. It " dragged its slow
length along" for years, and "until Cromwell crossed in
1650, and in one dreadful campaign established the rule of
the English Parliament."'' The Revolution of 1688 was
long and bloody, in Ireland. The sufferings of the Prot-
estants in the north of Ireland who supported William
the Third and opposed James the Second are well known.
1 Harrison, p. 36.
^ Ibid., p. 84.
3 Ibid., pp. 83 and 84. See, too. Petty, Sir William. Political Survcj' of Ire-
land in 1G72, pp. 9, 18, 20 (as quoted by Harrison).
4 Lecky, W. E. H. Hist, of England in the 18th Century, Vol. 11., p. 400.
Amer. ed., p. 430. " In 1715 Archbishop Syuge" (Synge's Letters, British Mu-
seum Add. MSS., 6, 117, p. 50) " estimated at not less than 50,000 the number
of Scotch families who had settled in Ulster since the Revolution."— Lecky,
p. 401. Am. ed., p. 43G.
6 Harrison, p. 79.
6
and Macaulay has rendered immortal the brave deeds of
the defenders of Londonderry.^
The Scotch immigrants suffered from repression of trade
and commerce. True, William III. encouraged the manu-
facture of linen and induced colonies of Huguenots who
were driven out of France by the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes to settle in northeast Ireland. " The first blow
struck" in the repression of industries, " was an Act which
forbade the exportation of cattle from Ireland to England ;^
the second, when by the fifteenth of Charles II., Ireland,
which up to this time in commercial matters had been
held as part of England, was brought under the Navigation
Acts, and her ships treated as if belonging to foreigners."^
It was in the reign of William III. that the woollen manu-
facture in Ireland was suppressed in the interest of the
English manufacturer, and legislation which brought about
this suppression was followed by "Acts forbidding the
Irish to export their wool to any country save England —
the English manufacturers desiring to get the wool of the
sister kingdom at their own price.""*
The Scotch immigrants in Ireland were mostly Presby-
terians. Under the mild ecclesiastical rule of Archbishop
Usher they prospered. Later they were persecuted, and in
1704 the obnoxious Test Act was imposed by Queen Anne.
Throughout their stay in Ireland the Scotch immigrants,
while thoy have intermarried with the Huguenots and Puri-
tan English to a certain extent, have not intermarried with
the Celtic Irish and have preserved their Scotch character-
istics.^
iMiicauliiy's History of England, Chap. XII.
2 Lclaud's History of Ireland, Vol. III., p. MS.
3 Harrison, p. 85. See, also, Macpherson's History of Commerce, Vol. III.,
p. 621, referred to by Harrison.
4 Ibid., p. 88. Lecky, v. 2, pp. 210 and 211. Am. ed., pp. 229 and 230.
5" Most of the great evils of Irish politics during the last two centuries have
arisen from the fact that its different classes and creeds have never been really
blended into one nation, that the repulsion of race or of religion has been
stronger than the attraction of u common nationality, and that the full energies
It is easy to see, after the recital of facts just given, why
the Scotch settlers in Ulster became discontented, and large
numbers of them emigrated to America in the eighteenth
century. In addition to their sufferings from the repression
of trade and commerce and from religious disabilities, agri-
culture was in a miserable condition, and at times when
land leases expired, the settlers could only renew them by
paying a largely increased rent.^ The emigration to Amer-
ica was very striking. Some of the Scottish settlers went
before 1700, and very early in the eighteenth century, but
the great bulk of the emigrants came to this country at two
distinct periods of time : the first, from 1718 to the middle
of the century; the second, from 1771 to 1773; although
there was a gentle current westward between these two
eras. In consequence of the famine of 1740 and 1741, it
is stated that for "several years afterwards, 12,000 emi-
grants annually left Ulster for the American plantations " ;
while from 1771 to 1773, "the whole emigration froui
Ulster is estimated at 30,000, of whom 10,000 are weavers."^
August 4, 1718, there arrived in Boston five small ships
and intellect of the country have in consequence seldom or never been enlisted in
a common cause." — Lecky , Vol. II., p. 405. Am. ed., pp. 440 and 441. Travellers
tell us that to-day in sections of Ulster the population is Scotch and not Irish.
Honorable Leonard A. Morrison of Canobic Lake, N. H., writes me, May 8,
1895, as follows : " I am one of Scotch-Irish blood and my ancestor came with
Rev. McGregor of Londonderry" (N. H.), " and neither they nor any of their
descendants were willing to be called ' merely Irish.' I have twice visited the
parish of Aghadowey, Co. Londonderry, from whicli they came, in Ireland, and
all that locality is filled, not with ' Irish ' but with Scotch-Irish, and this is pure
Scotch blood to-day, after more than 200 years." Mr. Morrison is the author
of a history of the Scotch-Irish town of Windham. N. H., aud of several other
valuable aud interesting books, most of them largely genealogical.
1 " At the time of the Kevolution, when great portions of the country lay
waste and when the whole framework of society was shattered, much Irish
land had been let on lease at very low rents to English, aud especially to Scotch
Protestants. About 1717 and 1718 these leases began to fall in. Rents were
usually doubled, and often trebled . . . For nearly three-quarters of a century
the drain of this energetic Protestant population continued."— Lecky, Vol. 2,
p. 260. Amer. ed., pp. 283, 284.
2 Harrison, pp. 90, 91. Reid, James. History of the Presbyterian Church in
Ireland, Ch. XXVI. Lecky, v. 2, p. 261. Am. ed., pp. 2S4 and 285. (Lecky
refers to Killen's Ecclesiastical History, IL, 261, 262.)
containing probably about seven hundred and fifty emigrants
from the north of Ireland.^ These were nearly all Scotch-
Irish. Their arrival was not unexpected, for, before coming,
they had sent over a messenger to Governor Shute and been
encouraged to come. A portion of the emigrants had re-
solved to unite in forming a settlement, and to place them-
selves under the pastoral care of Rev. James MacGregor,
a Presbyterian minister who came over with them. Six-
teen or twenty families from among these, embarked in a
brigantine and sailed east in search of a suitable site for a
town, the remainder going for the present to Andover and
Dracut. The party in the brigantine explored a considerable
portion of the coast of Maine and, as cold weather came on,
concluded to winter in Casco Bay at Falmouth, now Port-
land. They had a hard winter there and when spring came
determined, with some exceptions, to seek a place of settle-
ment with a milder and otherwise more agreeable climate.
They sailed west, entered the Merrimack River and came
to Haveihill. Here they heard of the town of Nutfield,
now Londonderry, New Hampshire. Having examined the
place, they determined to settle there. Here they were
joined by the members of their party who had gone tempo-
rarily into the country, including Rev. Mr. MacGregor, and
laid the foundations of a prosperous town. Londonderry
grew rapidly, Scotch-Irishmen already in this country flock-
ing to it, and emigrants of that race coming from the north
of Ireland to New England generally choosing it as their
place of settlement.
Another portion of the emigrants who came to Boston in
1718 went to Worcester, Massachusetts, to live. Professor
Arthur L. Perry, of Williamstown, whose father was born
in Worcester and whose family is one of the old families of
the place, himself a descendant of one of the Scotch-Irish
settlers in Worcester and an interested student of the quali-
1 Perry, Arthur L. The Scotch-Irish in New England. In Scotch-Irish
in America, Second Congress, p. 109.
9
ties and career of that portion of the early inhabitants of
the town, estimates that more than 200 Scotch-Irish people '
went to Worcester in 1718; they probably outnumbering
the population already there, who are represented as occu-
pying fifty-eight log houses. ~
At the time when these inhabitants went to Worcester,
the people of that place were making a third attempt
at settlement, they having been dispersed twice before
by the Indians ; and the town was not organized until
September, 1722. It appears by the town records that some
of the officers chosen in the earliest town meetings were
Scotch-Irishmen. That element of the population was not
popular, however, and although the government of the
Province was srlad to have this addition to the number of
the inhabitants of a frontier town exposed to the depreda-
tions of Indians, and although the older occupants of the
place may have looked with favor at first upon the coming
of the Scotch-Irish, the newcomers soon came to be disliked
and were treated with marked inhospitality. They Were of a
different race ; there was an especial prejudice against the
Irish which worked to their disadvantage, although they
were in reality, most of them, Scotchmen, who had merely
lived in Ireland. The habits of the foreigners were difierent
from those of the older inhabitants. They differed also in the
form of their religion, and although staunch Protestants the
Congregationalists, who made up the earlier settiers, were
not ready to tolerate the Presbyterianism of the newcomers.
The Scotch-Irish were treated so inhospitably in Worces-
ter that, while a considerable number of them remained
there, the larger portion went away, some to Coleraine, many
to Pelham ;^ and, after the destruction of the church they
were building, many others to Western (now Warren),
1 Scotch-Irish in America, Second Congress, p. Ill, comp. with p. 110.
2 Lincoln's History of Worcester, p. 40 (which gives the Projjrietary Records
as its authority).
3 See, particularly for Telham, Holland. J. G. History of Western Massa-
chusetts.
10
Blandford and other towns where they could live more com-
fortably and enjoy a larger liberty. They introduced the
potato, so generally known in this vicinity as the Irish
potato, into Worcester ^ as well as into Andover, Massachu-
setts, and other towns and parts of the country where they
settled. They are said to have made spinning fashionable
in Boston.
Dr. Matthew Thornton, the distinguished New Hamp-
shire statesman, one of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence, was brought to this country by his father
when only two or three years old. He received an " aca-
demical " ^ education in Worcester and after studying medi-
cine settled down in Londonderry, New Hampshire, to
practise his profession.^ At the second annual town meet-
ing in Worcester, held in March, 1724, James McClellan,
the great-great-great Scotch-Irish grandfather of General
George B. McClellan, was chosen a constable. Honorable
George T. Bigelow, a former Chief Justice of the Supreme
Judicial Court of Massachusetts, through his grandmother,
the wife of Colonel Timothy Bigelow, a revolutionary soldier
of local reputation, was descended from one of the members
of the Scotch-Irish colony in Worcester. Professor Perry
has also announced the discovery that the great botanist
1 According to tradition, the potato was introduced into Worcester by one
of a few families of Celtic-Irish who accompanied the Scotch-Irish when they
went to Worcester. Although the potato is indigenous in the southern portion
of America and was carried from this continent to Europe in the 16th century,
little or nothing seems to have been known about it in New England when the
band of Scotch-Irish came to Boston in ITIS. Some interesting stories are told
by Lincoln in his History of Worcester (p. 49), and by Parker in his History of
Londonderry, N. H. (p. 49), about the fears of early settlers of Worcester
Massachusetts, that the potato was poisonous; and about ignorance of the
character oft he vegetable, shown by settlers in Andover in their cooking the
balls of the plant instead of the tubers. See, also, Lewis's History of Lynn,
Massachusetts, "Annals," year 1718. The potato does not seem to have been
generally used in Ireland until many years after 1718. Naturally the common
potato, having been introduced by emigrants from Ireland, came to be quite
generally denominated the Irish potato, to distinguish it from the sweet potato.
That name is used to a considerable extent to-day.
2 Parker's History of Londonderry, p. 248.
3I6jcZ.,pp. 247, 248.
11
Asa Gray was a great-great-grandson of the first Scotch-
Irish Matthew Gray of Worcester.
There are in Worcester to-day two old houses which arc
believed to have been built and occupied by the early
Scotch-Irish residents, Andrew McFarland and Robert
Blair.
It is an interesting fact that Abraham Blair and William
Caldwell, of Worcester, and several of the inhabitants of
Londonderry, N. H., as survivors of the brave men Avho
defended Londonderry, Ireland, in 1(589, were, with their
heirs, freed from taxation, by Act of Parliament, in British
Provinces, and occupied what were here known until the
Revolution as " exempt farms."
As has been related, a few of the Scotch-Irish emigrants
who came to Boston in the vessels which arrived August 4,
1718, settled in Maine, a large portion went to London-
derry, N. H., and two hundred or so to Worcester. A con-
siderable number, however, remained in Boston, and, uniting
with those of their countrymen of their own faith already
there, formed the religious society which was known as the
Presbyterian Church in Long Lane — afterwards Federal
Street. That Church became Congregational in 178(5, and,
on April 4, 1787, Dr. Jeremy Belknap, the founder and
one of its officers until his death, of the Massachusetts His-
torical Society, was installed as its pastor. This is the
same society which later had William Ellery Channing for
its minister, and the successor to which is the Unitarian
body which worships in the stone New England meeting-
house on Arlington Street.
In 1719 and 1720 several hundred families of Scotch-
Irish from the north of Ireland were landed on the shores
of the Kennebec River in Maine in accordance with arrange-
ments made by an Irish gentleman, Robert Temple.^ They
1 Honorable Edward L. Pierce calls my attention to Winsor's Memorial His-
tory of Boston, Vol. 2, p. 540, where it is stated that our " Captain Kobert
Temple came over in 1717 with a number of Scotch-Irish emigrants."
12
were soon dispersed by Indians and a large portion of the
settlers went to Pennsylvania, and considerable numbers to
Londonderry and other places. Some remained in Maine,
however. This immigration is of particular interest to
members of this Society, for its conductor, Robert Temple,
was the ancestor of our second president, Thomas Lindall
Winthrop, and his son, Robert Charles Winthrop, who has
for so long a time taken a marked interest in our proceed-
insfs and whose loss is fresh in our memories to-day.
r] I n f From lp29 to 1632 Colonel Dunbar was governor of
Sagadahoc, a tract of land lying between the Kennebec and
St. Croix rivers. He was a Scotch-Irishman, and made
some of his countrymen large owners of land in the terri-
tory under him. They in turn introduced, in the course of
two or three years, one hundred and JBfty families into the
territory. These were mostly Scotch-Irish, and came partly
from older settlements in Massachusetts and New Hamp-
shire and partly from Ireland. Numerous descendants of
the settlers are to be found to-day in the territory which
Dunbar governed, and others' are scattered over the whole
State of Maine.
Samuel Waldo, a member of a family well known in
Boston and Worcester, was probably the last person to
introduce a colony of the Scotch-Irish people into Maine
prior to the Revolution. He owned large tracts of land
between the Penobscot and St. George rivers. His first
settlers, who went upon his lands in 1735, were Scotch-
Irish, some recent immigrants, some who had been in the
country since 1718. Their posterity are excellent citizens.
Some of the persons wrecked in the " Grand Design " from
the north of Ireland, on Mt. Desert, settled on Waldo's
lands. In 1753, Samuel Waldo formed in Scotland a com-
pany of sixty adults and a number of children to settle on
his possessions.
Our lamented Scotch-Irish associate. Governor Charles
H. Bell, of Exeter, N. H., in the address which he made
13
at the 150th anniversary of the settlement of old Nutfield
(Londonderry), June 10, 18G9, calls attention to the fact of
"the prodigious increase in numbers which the descendants
of the early Londonderry stock have attained, in the four or
five generations which have passed away since the colony, of
such slender proportions, was formed." " It is estimated,"
he said, " by persons best qualified to pronounce upon the
subject, that the aggregate, in every section, would now
fall'little short of 5V',000 souls."'
Certain it is that a large portion of the inhabitants of
New Hampshire and Maine, and a considerable portion of
those in Massachusetts, as well as many persons in Ver-
mont, Rhode Island and Connecticut have had Scotch-Irish
ancestors. When this people has settled in some part of
our country it has sent out colonies. Parker, the historian
of Londonderry, says that "during the period of twenty-
five years preceding the Revolution, ten distinct settlements
were made by emigrants from Londonderry, all of which
have become towns of influence and importance in the
Statc."2
In the first third of the seventeenth century Sir William
Alexander, a favorite of James the First, tried to found a
new Scotland in America. The only existing memorial of
that attempt is the name of Nova Scotia.^ A more success-
ful effort was made after the forced evacuation of the
French from that province in 1755. About the year 1760,
a party of Scotch-Irishmen, many of them from London-
derry, N. H., started a permanent settlement at Truro.
Among the settlers from Londonderry were several Archi-
balds, members of a family which has held a distinguished
place in the public life of Nova Scotia.'* Among the pio-
1 The Loudondtiiry Celebration, p. IG.
- Parker, Edward L. The History of Londonderry, p. 99.
s For an account of the work done in America under the auspices of Sir
William Alexander, see Proceedings and Transactions of the lloyal Society of
Canada, for the year 1892, Vol. X., Section 2, pp. 79-107.
* Parker's Londonderry, p. 200.
14
neers was Captain William Blair also, a son of Colonel
Robert Blair, of Worcester, Massachusetts, and grandson of
Colonel Robert Blair, one of the defenders of Londonderry,
Ireland.^ Other Scotch-Irish settlers followed, and their
descendants became numerous, and peopled neighboring
towns.
October 9, 1761, Colonel Alexander McNutt, an agent of
the British government, arrived in Halifax with more than
300 settlers from the north of Ireland. In the followins:
spring some of these went to Londonderry, Onslow, and
Truro. ^ September 15, 1773, the "Hector," the first emi-
grant ship from Scotland to come to Nova Scotia, arrived in
the harbor of Pictou. The pioneers who came in that vessel
formed the beginning of a stream of emigrants from Scot-
land which flowed over the county of Pictou, the eastern por-
tions of the province, Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island,
portions of New Brunswick and even the upper provinces.^
A large portion of these emigrants, however, came from
the Highlands of Scotland, and, although they formed a
valuable part of the population of Nova Scotia and other
provinces, were of a somewhat different blood from the
Lowland Scotch and their matured countrymen, the
Scotch-Irish.
A very considerable portion of the people of Canada are
of the Scotch-Irish race. There are in ever}' province, it
is said, centres almost entirely settled by people of that
extraction. That is the case with Colchester County in
Nova Scotia, in which Truro, of which I have spoken, is
situated. It is so with Simcoe County in Ontario. Rev.
Stuart Acheson, who was a settled pastor in the last named
county for ten years, states that in his "First Essa Church"'*
all the families but one were Scotch-Irish. New Brunswick
1 Miller, Thomas. Historical aud Genealogical Record of the first settlers of
Colchester County, etc., p. 1G7.
2 Miller, p. 15.
3 Patterson, George. History of the County of Tictou, Nova Scotia, p. 82.
*3d Scotch-Irish Cong., p. 210.
15
has her share of this race. It should be added, that the
Counties in the Dominion of Canada in which this people
have lived have been leaders in civilization.
There is an incident in Canadian history in which two
distinguished Scotch-Irishmen figured conspicuously. Sir
Guy Carleton, whom we remember in the United States as
the Commander-in-Chief of tlae British Army at the close
of the Revolution, was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of
Quebec in 1767, and while holding that office earned for
himself the title of Saviour of Canada. He was born at
Strabane, in the County of Tyrone, in Ireland. Eichard
Montgomery,. his companion in arms at the siege of Quebec
when it was taken by Wolfe, was born not more than seven
miles away, at Conroy.^ These two Scotch-Irishmen, fel-
iThis statement and several particulars of the incidents in the lives of
Carleton and Montgomery given immediately after were taken from a paper
entitled The Scotch-Irish in Canada, by Rev. Stuart Aeheson, M.A., of
Toronto, in The Scotch-Irish in America, Third Cong., pp. 195-212. John
Armstrong, the writer of the life of Richard Montgomery in The Library of
American Biography, conducted by Jared Sparks, states that Richard and his
two brothers were sons of Thomas Montgomery of Conroy House. The
father does not seem to have owned that place, however; it came to his son
Alexander from his cousin. (See Burke's Landed Gentry [ISSG], Vol. II.,
p. 12SS.) The late Mr. Henry Manners Chichester states in the article
" Montgomery, Richard," in Dictionary of National Biography, that the latter
was born at Swords, near Felti-im, Co. Dublin. One cannot help wonder-
ing whether Mr. Aeheson, if he has not merely followed Armstrong or some
other biographer, has not confounded Richard Montgomery with his elder
brother Alexander. The susiiicion arises readily because cruel acts said 1o
have been performed in Canada by Alexander Montgomery were ascribed to
Richard (see Montcalm and AVolfe, by Francis Parkman, Vol. II., p. 261). Of
course it is not impossible that the statement of Mr. Aeheson, although it
may not be strictly true, leaves a correct impression, for Richard Montgomery
may have spent considerable portions of his younger days with his brother
at Conroy. For Richard Montgomery see, as above, Montgomery of Beaulieu,
Burke's Landed Gentry (1S8G), Vol. II., p. 12SS. See, also, "Ancestry of
General Richard Montgomery," by Thomas H. Montgomery, in the " New
York Genealogical and Biographical Record" (July, 1S71), where, it is
stated, his relationship to the ancestral Scottish family is traced. For Guy
Carleton, see Burke's Peerage, under Lord Dorchester. It is very ch'flicult to
be perfectly accurate, with information now readily accessible, in respect to
statements regarding the Scotch-Irish, and it is evident that men who came
from the north of Ireland, or descendants from such persons, have been not
infrequently claimed as of Scotch extraction, without sufficient investigation,
16
low-soldiers at first, became formidable foes later. In the
latter part of the year 1775, General Montgomery, as is
well known, led an army of the disaffected colonies into
Canada. Guy Carleton was in command of the Canadian
forces which opposed him. They were both brave and able
men. Montgomery had the advantage at first ; he took
Montreal and other places, and succeeded in placing his
army between Carleton's troops and Quebec. The latter
general's position seemed desperate. But he was equal to
the occasion. You have often heard the story of his action
at this juncture of affairs. Disguised as a French Canadian
peasant or as a fisherman, with a faithful aide-de-camp
also disguised, he got into a little boat to go down the St.
Lawrence to Quebec. He reached Three Rivers, and found
it full of the enemy. He and his companion stayed long
enough in the place to take some refreshments and then,
unrecognized, continued their journey. Finally they over-
hauled two schooners flying the British flag, were taken
aboard and carried to Quebec. Montgomery united with
Benedict Arnold, who had made a futile attempt to take the
citadel of Quebec, at Pointe aux Trembles and, together,
they proceeded to make another attempt to take Quebec.
They reached the Plains of Abraham, and demanded its
surrender. Carleton declined to surrender. After battering
the walls of the citadel for a short time ineftectually,
Montgomery determined to storm the town. You recall the
and when they had but little Scotch blood. Many of the Presbyterians of the
north of Ireland were of Huguenot, Welsh, English, and other extractions.
I have taken reasonable pains to be accurate, but cannot hope that I have been
perfectly so. Two things are evident, however, namely, that very large num-
bers of emigrants from Ireland of Scotch blood came to this country in the ISth
century, and that they exerted a great influence here for good, particularly in
the Southern Middle and Southern Atlantic States. It may also be added,
without disparagement of the good qualities of men of other extractions, that
the powerful and beneficent influence which they exerted was largely the
result of peculiarly Scottish characteristics. It is also not improbable that
many persons without Scotch blood in their veins came from being trained in
childhood and boyhood in Scotch communities, to have what we recognize as
Scotch characteristics.
17
failure of the attempt, and the tragic end of Montgomery.
As he and his men came under the fire of the enemy its
cannon greeted them with a destructive discharge, and the
brave general and many of his men were hiid low in death. ^
After the battle Carleton sought out, amid the winter snow,
the body of his fellow-countryman and neighbor, and, pay-
ing the tribute of one Scotch-Irishman to another Scotch-
Irishman, had it buried with military honors.
In 1682, William Pcnn interested a number of promi-
nent Scotchmen in a scheme for colonizing the eastern
section of New Jersey. "These Scotchmen," says Douglas
Campbell, " sent over a number of settlers who have largely
given character to this sturdy little State, not the least of
their achievements being the building-up, if not the nominal
founding, of Princeton College, which has contributed so
largely to the scholarship of America."^
While considerable numbers of the Scotch-Irish emigrated
to New England in the great exodus from Ireland during
the fifty or sixty years prior to the American Revolution,
the great body of those coming here entered the continent
by Avay of Philadelphia. Penn's Colony was more hospit-
able to immigrants of faiths differing from the prevalent
belief of its inhabitants, than were most of the New Enofland
provinces.
Then, too, the Scotch-Irish emigrants were mostly
farmers, and did not find New England so favorable from
an agricultural point of view as some of the middle and
southern colonies.
Immigrants came in such numbers to Philadelphia as to
frighten James Logan, the Scotch-Irish ^ Quaker Governor
1 Scoteli-Irish in America, Tliird Cong., p. 202. (Paper by Stuart Acheson.)
Tlie writer would seem to have been uiistal<eu in supposing that Montgomery
was killed by shot fired from the guns of Fort Diamond on the summit of the
citadel.
- Baird, Rev. Robert, Religion in the United States of America, p. 154, as
referred to by Campbell, Vol. II., p. 484.
3 Professor George Macloskie in Scotch-Irish in America, Third Cong., p. 97.
2
18
of Pennsylvania from 1699 to 1749. He complains in 1725
that "it looks as if Ireland were to send all her inhab-
itants hither ; if they will continue to come, they will
make themselves proprietors of the province."' The bold
stream of settlers who came to Philadelphia, flowed west-
ward and occupied considerable portions of the province of
Pennsylvania.
It is said of Pittsburg that it is Scotch -Irish in " sub-
stantial origin, in complexion and history, — Scotch-Irish
in the countenances of the living and the records of the
dead." 2
It is estimated that at the time of the Revolution one-
third of the population of Pennsylvania was Scotch-Irish.
A large portion of the emigrants who came from the
north of Ireland to Philadelphia, went south. This was
especially the case after Braddock's defeat in 1755, made"
the Indians bold and aggressive in the west.
A very large portion of the people in the South Atlantic
States are of Scotch-Irish extraction.
During many years of the eighteenth century a stream
of emigrants flowed south, through Maryland, Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina, and across the Savannah
river, into Georgia. Their movements were parallel with
the lines of the Blue Ridge.
In Maryland they settled, mainly, in the narrow slip of
land in the western part of the State, although they were
to be found scattered through all portions of the province.
In the latter part of the seventeenth and the earlier
years of the eighteenth centuries there were many Scotch-
Irish residents in Virginia, east of the Blue Ridge moun-
tains ; some were even settled west of that range. In
1738 began a movement which completely filled the valley
iMacloskie, in First Scotch-Irish Congress, p. 95. Professor Macloskie
speaks of Logan as a Scotch-Irish Quaker who was " a native of County
Armagh, Ireland."
•■^The Scotch-Irish in Western Pennsylvania. John Dalzell, in Second
Scotch-Irish Congress, p. 175.
19
west of the Blue Ridge, from Pennsylvania to North
Carolina, with men of that race, excepting the lower por-
tion, which was occupied by Germans.
In the year 1736, Henry McCuUock, from the province
of Ulster, obtained' a grant of 64,000 acres in the present
County of Duplin, North Carolina, and introduced upon
it between three tind four thousand of his Scotch-Irish
countrymen from the north of Ireland.
Besides the large number of emigrants of this nationality
who came, through Virginia from Pennsylvania, into
North Carolina, many ships filled with Scotch-Irish passen-
gers from the north of Ireland came into Charleston and
other southern ports, and the emigrants moving north met
those coming south from Pennsylvania and settled with
them in North Carolina and other southern States.
Our associate, William Wirt Henry, in speaking of the
Scotch-Irish, says: "So great was the population of the
race in North Carolina before the Revolution, that they
may be said to have given direction to her history. With
their advent, began the educational history of the State. "^
Dr. David Ramsay, an ardent patriot in Revolutionary
times, like the New Hampshire physician, Matthew
Thornton, wrote much, as is well known, about the history
of South Carolina. He says, as quoted by Henry, in
speaking of pre-revolutionary times, that "scarce a ship
sailed from any of 'the ports of Ireland' for Charleston,
that was not crowded Avith men, women, and children."
He speaks, too, of a thousand emigrants who came in a
single year from Pennsylvania and Virginia, driving their
horses, cattle and hogs before them and who were assigned
places in the western woods of the province. These, says
Henry, were Scotch-Irish. The}'^ were distinguished by
economy and industry, and the portion of the province
occupied by them soon became its most populous part.
1 The Seotch-Irisb of the South, by William Wirt Henry, in First Scotch-
Irish Congress, pp. 123, 124.
20
Eamsay says, that to this element in the population,
" South Carolina is indebted for much of its early litera-
ture. A great proportion of its physicians, clergymen,
lawyers and schoolmasters were from North Britain." ^
The early settlers of South Carolina were largely Hugue-
nots ; the province seems to have been generously peopled,
too, by the Scotch-Irish, a race which was connected by a
religious tie to the Huguenots, both being warm Calvinists.
The prosperity of Georgia has been largely owing to
Scotch-Irish settlers and their descendants.
The pioneers of Kentucky were mainly from Virginia
and North Carolina, and its population is largely Scotch-
Irish in its ancestry. The first settlers of Tennessee crossed
over the mountains from North Carolina and with subse-
quent emigrants made that State one of those, a very large
portion of whose people are of the same race. Mississippi
and Alabama, Florida, Arkansas and Missouri, were settled
at first by emigrants from adjacent States and have all of
them, naturally, a considerable Scotch-Irish element in their
population.
Texas was conquered by a Scotch-Irishman, General
Sam Houston,^ and has many fjimilies of Scotch-Irish
ancestry within its borders. There are many representa-
tives of this race in other States, such as Ohio, Iowa, Min-
nesota and California. The race has been prolific and,
being of a hardy, brave and adventurous spirit, has gone
everywhere throughout the country.
The story of Cherry Valley, a little town in New York
that was settled by Scotch-Irishmen in 1741, is very
interesting, but I have no time to tell it.^
1 Ramsay as quoted by Heury, First Coug. of the Scotcb-Irisb, p. 125.
2" His" (Houston's) " ancestors on his father's and mother's side are traced
back to the Highlands of Scotland." They emigrated to the north of Ireland.
" Here they remained until the siege of Derry, in which they were engaged,
when they emigrated to Pennsylvania."— D. C. Kelley in Scotch-Irish in
America, Second Congress, p. 145.
3 From this town came the ancestois of the kite Douglas Campbell, a
descendant of one of the defenders of Londonderry, Ireland, whose recently
21
The Scotch-Irish settlers who came to this country
repaired, for the most part, to the frontiers of the colonies.
This is true of those who went to the Middle and South
Atlantic States, where they were found mainly in their
western portions. It was true, also, of such as came to
Maine, to Londonderry, New Hampshire, and to Worces-
ter, Massachusetts. The result was that it was in very
large measure people of this nationality who were engaged
in the Indian struggles which preceded the Revolution.
We find men of this race actively engaged in the Old
French war, which began in 1744, and in the later contest
between Great Britain and France on this continent, upon
the renewal of hostilities in 1756. Thus, soldiers from
Londonderry served under Pepperell in the expedition
against Cape Breton. During the later attempt upon
Crown Point, three companies of hardy men, who had
adroitness in traversing woods, were selected from the
New Hampshire regiment to act as rangers. Many of the
men selected were from the Scotch-Irish town of London-
derry, and the three captains, Robert Rogers, John Stark,
and William Stark, had all been residents of the same
place. The two latter were brothers and sons of an early
Scotch-Irish inhabitant of the town.^ Rogers, a brave and
skilful officer, was soon made Major, and his body of
rangers performed active and efficient service. A com-
pany of soldiers from Londonderry aided in the reduction
of Canada in the campaign when Quebec was taken by
Wolfe.
In the Colonial wars which preceded the Revolution, it is
stated that the soldiers of Virginia were principally drawn
published work. The Puritan in England, Holland and America, has attracted
considerable attention. The last chapter of his volumes is an interesting
summary of much that has become known about the Scotch-Irish in the
United States.— See Campbell, Vol. II., p. 482, note. American Ancestry.
(J. Munsell's Sons.) Vol. 8, 1893, p. 156.
1 Parker (p. 239) says that Archibald Stark, the father of William and John
Stark, was, like many of the earlj* emigrants to Londonderry, N. H., " a
native of Scotland, and emigrated while young to Londonderry in Ireland."
22 »
from the Scotch-Irish settlements in the valley west of the
Blue Ridge and in the Piedmont Counties. Previous to
the encounter at Lexington, three British soldiers deserted
from the army in Boston and found their way to London-
derr3\ Their hiding place was disclosed and a detachment
of soldiers was sent from Boston to arrest them. They
were taken prisoners, but had not gone far before a com-
pany of young men, which had been hurriedly raised in
Londonderry, by Captain James Aiken, caught up with
their captors and demanded and secured their release.
The rescued men afterwards lived unmolested in London-
derry.' As soon as the news of the battle of Lexington
reached New Hampshire, 1200 troops immediately repaired
to Cambridge and Charlestown. Among these was a large
company from Londonderry, commanded by George Reed,
who upon the organization of the troops at Cambridge was
made a Colonel. The New Hampshire Convention held at
Exeter, April 25, 1775, formed the troops of that State
then near Boston, into two regiments under the command
of Colonels Reed and Stark, natives of Londonderry.
At the tirstcall of Congress for soldiers to defend Boston,
Daniel Morgan, of Scotch-Irish blood,^ immediately raised
a company of riflemen among his people in the lower
valley of Virginia, and by a forced march of six hundred
miles reached the beleaguered town in three weeks.
The back or upper counties of Virginia were Scotch-
Irish. Their representatives got control of the House of
Burgesses, and it was by their votes, and under the leader-
ship of the young Scotchman,^ Patrick Henry, that were
passed, in opposition to the combined efforts of the old
1 Parker, p. 104.
- W. W. Henry, in Scotch-Irish in America, First Cong., p. 118. -
3 William Wirt Henry writes in the article " Henry, Patrick," in Appleton's
Cyclopiedia of American Biography, of Patrick Henry: "His father, John
Henry, was a Scotchman, son of Alexander Henry and Jean Robertson, a
cousin of the historian William Robertson and of the mother of Lord
Brougham."
t 23
leaders of the province, those resolutions denying the
validity of the Stamp Act, which roused the continent.^
While it cannot be allowed that the Scotch-Irish people
of Mecklenburg county. North Carolina, passed resolu-
tions May 20, 1775, declaring their independence of Great
Britain, it is certain that on the 31st of that month they
uttered patriotic sentiments fully abreast of the time.^
The men of this race showed these sentiments every-
where throughout the Colonies. Four months before the
passage of the resolutions in Mecklenburg County, the
freeholders of Fincastle County, Virginia, presented an
address to the Continental Congress in which they declared,
that if an attempt were made to dragoon them out of the
privileges to which they were entitled as subjects of Great
Britain and to reduce them to slavery, they were "delib-
erately and resolutely determined never to surrender
them to any power on earth but at the expense of" their
"lives." 3
It was seventeen days before the Declaration of Inde-
pendence that eighty-three able-bodied men of the Scotch-
Irish town of Peterborough, N. H., signed this resolution:
" We, the subscribers, do hereby solemnly engage and
promise, that we will, to the utmost of our power, at the
risk of our lives and fortune, with arms, oppose the hostile
proceedings of the British fleets and armies against the
united Colonies."'^
It has been suggested that even after the Declaration of
Independence had been adopted by Congress, it would not
have been signed and promulgated but for the action of
John Witherspoon, one of the delegates from New Jersey,
the President of Princeton College, a Scotch Presbyterian
1 Henry in First Scotch-Irish Cong., p. 118.
2 Narrative and Critical History of America, Ed. by .Justin Winsor, v. C,
pp. 256, 257, note.
y Professor Henry Alexander White, in Scotch-Irish in America, Second
Cong., p. 232.
4 Parker, p. 18G.
24
clergyman and a descendant of John Knox. Seeing how
the other representatives held bacli, he rose in his place, you
remember, and declaring that as his gray head must soon
bow to the fate of all, he preferred that it should go by the
axe of the executioner rather than that the cause of inde-
pendence should not prevail.^
Several Scotchmen and Scotch-Irishmen signed the
Declaration. Professor Macloskie, a Scotch-Irish professor
in Princeton College, states that the " Declaration of Inde-
pendence as we have it to-day is in the handwriting of a
Scotch-Irishman, Charles Thomson, the Secretary of Con-
gress ; was first printed by Captain Thomas Dunlap, another
Scotch-Irishman, who published the first daily newspaper
in America ; a third Scotch-Irishman, Captain John Nixon,
of Philadelphia, first read it to the people."^
The Scotch-Irish came to this country full of bitter feel-
ing towards the government of Great Britain. They had
been oppressed by that government and they believed that
it had wickedly broken faith with them. They hated, too,
the hierarchy of the Church of England. Presbyterians
as they were, they had been oppressed by that hierarchy.
They sympathized, also, with the Puritans of New Eng-
land, who regarded the presence here of bishops and other
ecclesiastics of the Church of England as the presence of
the emissaries of a foreign power that was trying to reduce
them to subjection.
It was largely through Scotch-Irish influence and support
that religious liberty was established in Virginia and else-
where throughout this country. These showed themselves
when, in 1776, Patrick Henry, a Scotchman, as before
iThis anecdote appears in a number of places. (See, e.g., Craigbead's
Scotcb and Irisb Seeds, etc., p. 334.) Tt may be found witb the particular turn
given to it bere in Tbe Scotcb-Irisb in America, First Cong., pp. 182, 183, in
an address by Colonel A. K. M'Clure, of rhiladelpbia.
2 Professor George Macloskie, Princeton College, to wbom Campbell declares
bira«elf indebted for the information given. See Campbell, Vol. II., p. 487
(note). See, also. The Scotch-Irish iu America, First Congress, p. 95.
25
stated, led in the movement which secured the insertion in
the famous Bill of Rights of Virginia of the declaration
that one of the inalienable rights of man is his right to
worship God according to the dictates of his conscience.
It was through the pressure of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians
that Jefferson, in the next session of the assembly, was
prompted to write, and by their votes that he secured the
passage of, the act for the establishment of religious liberty,
which has done so much to effect the divorce of Church
and State in Virginia and throughout the Union.
In contemplating the wide-reaching results of the exam-
ple set here in America, Mr. William Wirt Henry is led to
add to a statement similar to the one just made, "Thus
there was completed by the Scotch-Irish in Virginia, in
1776, the Reformation commenced by Luther two hundred
and fifty years before." ^
The Scotch-Irish, as you would imply from what I have
said before, entered into the contest of the Revolution, not V
only to uphold civil and religious liberty, but also with a
zeal inspired by an ardent desire to pay off old scores.^ The
Scotch-Irish served in great numbers in the Continental
array and in the militia of the several States during the
Revolution, and the achievements of their officers and
men were often brilliant. When the British landed at
Charlestown "the two New Hampshire regiments were
ordered to join the forces on Breed's Hill. A part were
detached to throw up a work on Bunker Hill, and the
remainder under" the Colonels born in Londonderry,
" Stark and Reed, joined the Connecticut forces under
General Putnam, and the regiment of Colonel Prescott, at
1 Scotch-Irish iu America, First Cong., p. 123.
2 Froude says : " But throughout the revolted colonies, and, therefore, prob-
ably in the first to bei^in the struggle, all evidence shows that the foremost, the
most irreconcilable, the most determined in pushing the quarrel to the last ex-
tremity, were the Scotch-Irish whom the bishops and Lord Donegal and Com-
pany had been pleased to drive out of Ulster." -The English in Ireland iu the
18th Century, by J. A. Froude, Vol. II., p. 141 (English ed.).
26
the rail-fence. 'This was the very point of the British
attack, the key of the American position.'"^
Again, it was John Stark who hurriedly gathered together
1,400 well-trained militia from New Hampshire and Ver-
mont, and instead of making Molly Stark a widow, beat the
detachment of troops which Burgoyne had sent to Benning-
ton, giving the Americans the much needed inspiration of
a victory. In less than two months followed the battle of
Saratoga, October 7, 1777. Burgoyne was conducting an
armed reconnoissance and much fighting ensued. The right
of the British line was commanded by the brave Scotchman,
General Simon Fraser. On the left of the American
troops was the equally brave Scotch-Irish Colonel Morgan,
with his regiment of sharpshooters. The Scotch-Irish in
America were generally tine marksmen.^ Seeing that an
officer on an iron gray charger was active in the fight and
that wherever he went he turned the tide of battle,
Morgan, calling to some of the best men in his regiment,
pointed to the officer and said, "Bring him down." At the
crack of a faithful rifle the gallant British officer reeled in
his saddle and fell. That officer was Simon Fraser, the
idol of Burgoyne's army.^ Burgoyne was now in straits,
and fiiiling to receive hoped-for aid from Sir Henry
Clinton, surrendered his army on the 17th of the month.
A distinguished member of this Society^ has labored hard,
during the last few years, in forcible and eloquent speech,
to secure for the pioneer settler of the Northwestern Terri-
tory, General Rufus Putman, of Rutland, Massachusetts,
1 Parker, p. 106.
2 Parker quotes from an uunamed writer the following w^ords as written
about the troops under Colonels Stark and Reed at Bunker Hill : " Almost
every soldier equalled William Tell as a marksman, and could aim his weapon
at au opposer with as keen a relish. Those from the frontiers had gained this
address against the savages and beasts of the forests."— Parker's History of
Londonderry, p. 106.
3 William Wirt Henry in First Scotch-Irish Congress, p. 119. Lossing's Pic-
torial Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. I., p. 62.
4 Hon. George F. Hoar.
27
due recognition of what he regards as his great merits as an
officer in the Revolutionary army, and his inestimable ser-
vices in giving a proper tone to the settlements in the north-
west. It is interesting to mention in connection with this
fact another fact, namely, that the Northwestern Territory,
then claimed by Virginia, was taken possession of in 1778,
in an ever memorable campaign, by the great soldier,
Colonel George Rogers Clark, of Scotch descent,^ and
two hundred brave men of the Scotch-Irish race whom
he had collected for his secret expedition, in Augusta
County, Virginia, and in Kentucky, at the command of
the Scotch governor, Patrick Henry.
It would be a pleasant task to speak at length of the
exploits, during the Revolution, of officers and men from
the Middle and Southern States, of Scotch-Irish extraction,
for a majority of the troops who served on the American
side, from Pennsylvania and the States south of it, seem
to have been of that nationality. I can only mention,
however, the battle of King's Mountain, which was fought
by a body of troops composed of Huguenots and of Scotch-
Irish volunteers. This battle took place the 7th of October,
1780, just three years after the memorable engagement at
Saratoga, and, like the earlier contest, was a turning point
in the affairs of the Americans. That battle was the fore-
runner of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, and
stood in causal relations to it, just as the battle of Saratoga
resulted in the capture of the army of Burgoyne.
1 Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites, Secretary of The State Historical Society of Wis-
consin, writes to the author of this paper, as follows : —
" Accordinj^ to all family traditions, John Clark, great-grandfather of George
Rogers Clark, came to Virginia in 1630, from the southwest part of Scotland.
According to one tradition, a few years later, he visited friends in Maryland,
and married there 'a red-haired Scotchwoman.' George Rogers Clark him-
self, had 'sandy' hair; another tradition lias it, that the woman was a Daue.
Their one son, William John, died early, leaving two sons, John('-) and Jona-
than. Jonathan was a bachelor, and left his estate to his brother's son, John(3).
One of William John's daughters married a Scotch settler, McCloud, and their
daughter married Jobu Rogers, father of the Ann Rogers who married John
Clark (^), her cousin, and thus she became the mother of George Rogers Clark.
So George Rogers Clark had Scotch ancestry on both sides of the house."
28
Besides the officers already mentioned, the Scotch-Irish
contributed to the Continental army during the Revolution
such men as General Henry Knox of Massachusetts/
General George Clinton of New york,^ and, as claimed on
apparently good grounds, Colonel John Eager Howard of
Maryland, who changed the fortunes of the day at the battle
of Cowpens, Colonel William Campbell of Virginia, who
won the battle of King's Mountain, and General Andrew
Pickens of South Carolina.^
" After the adoption of the Declaration of Independence,
the various States proceeded to form their independent
governments. Then the Scotch-Irish gave to New York
her first governor, George Clinton, who filled the position
for seven terms, of three years each, and died during his
second term of office as Vice-President of the United
1 See Life and Correspoudeuce of Henry Knox, etc., by Francis S. Drake,
Boston, 1873, pp. 8, 9.
2 American Ancestry, Vol. VI., 1891, p. 52.
3 General Anthony Wayne, the brave hero of Stony Point, is commonly
spoken of as a Scotch-Irishman. His father was born in "Wicklow County,
Ireland. There was a tradition in the family that the Waynes were of Welsh
origin. They may have intermarried with persons of Scotch blood, however.
(See American Ancestry, Vol. IV., p. 75.) General John Sullivan of Maine
and New Hampshire, older brother of Governor James Sullivan of Massachu-
setts, is sometimes claimed as a Scotch-Irishman. He certainlj' was Irish, but
I do not find that he was Scotch also. In Craighead's Scotch and Irish Seeds
in American Soil, Rev. Dr. Smith is quoted as saying that General Morgan, the
hero of Cowpens, and General Pickens, who made the arrangements for that
battle, were "both Presbyterian elders," and that "nearly all under their
command were Presbyterians." (p. 342.) Dr. Smith is also quoted as saying,
that" in the battle of King's Mountain, Colonel Campbell" and several other
high officers were Presbyterian elders, and that " the body of their troops
were collected from Presbyterian settlements." (p. 342.) General Wayne is
mentioned as a Presbyterian, (p. 340.) Of course there were many Presby-
terians not of Scotch or Scotch-Irish blood, but men of those races who
emigrated to America and their families were for the most part of that
denomination. The picturesque Kentuckian, Daniel Boone, is often spoken of
as a Scotch-Irishman. It is well known that the late Lyman C. Draper had un-
usual facilities for finding out the truth in regard to the Boones. Mr. Reuben
G. Thwaites writes me from Madison, Wisconsin, as follows : " Daniel Boone's
father was of pure English stock, from Devonshire; his mother, Sarah
Morgan, was a Welsh Quaker. Draper's notes clearly indicate that he dis-
carded the Scotch-Irish theory regarding Sarah."
29
States. To Delaware they gave her first governor, John
MacKinney. To Pennsylvania they gave her war governor,
Thomas McKean, one of the signers of the Declaration of
Independence. To New Jersey Scotland gave her war
governor, William Livingston, and to Virginia, Patrick
Henry, not only her great war governor" but her civil
leader.^
"It is a noteworthy fact in American history," writes
Douglas Campbell, "that of the four members of Wash-
ington's cabinet, Knox, of Massachusetts, the only New
Englander, was a Scotch-Irishman ; Alexander Hamilton
of New York was a Scotch-Frenchman ; Thomas Jefferson
was of Welsh descent; and the fourth, Edmund Eandolph,
claimed among his ancestors the Scotch Earls of Murray.
New York also furnished the first Chief Justice of the United
States, John Jay, who was a descendant of French Hugue-
nots; while the second Chief Justice, John Rutledge, was
Scotch-Irish, as were also Wilson and Iredell, two of the
four original associate justices ; a third, Blair, being of
Scotch origin. John Marshall, the great Chief Justice,
was, like Jefferson, of Welsh descent." ^
After the formation of the United States ijovernment we
find men of the Scotch-Irish race winning honors in war as
they had done in the Revolution, and in the earlier contests
between France and Great Britain, and with the North
American Indians.
At first, the United States had only a nominal army. In
the spring of 1792 the number of troops was increased to
5,000, a legionary organization was adopted, and Anthony
Wayne was appointed Major-General. With this army
General Wayne took the field against the Miami Indians,
and overthrew them at the battle of Maumee Rapids on
August 20, 1794.
You all remember the stirring picture of the Battle of
1 Campbell, Vol. II., p. 4S7.
^Ibid.,i>. 481, note.
30
Lake Erie in the Capitol at Washington. Commodore
Oliver Hazard Perry, taking his younger brother Alexander
with him and calling to four sailors to row him to the
Niagara, is represented, with the flag of his vessel wrapped
around his arm, as he passed from the disabled Laivrence in
a small boat to the ship next in size to the ruined flag-ship.
Going out from Put-in-Bay the 10th of September, 1813,
with his whole squadron, he met the British fleet in a mem-
orable naval contest. Himself a young man of twenty-
eight years of age he was opposed to one of Nelson's
veterans. Himself a Scotch-Irishman, his opponent, Cap-
tain Robert H. Barclay, was a Scotchman. The engage-
ment was hot, but at three o'clock in the afternoon the gal-
lant Perry saw the British flag hauled down. For the first
time since she had created a navy. Great Britain lost an
entire squadron. " We have met the enemy and they are
ours," is the familiar line in which Perry announced his
victory, in a despatch to General William Henry Harrison.
Commodore Perry's mother was Sarah Wallace Alexander,
a Scotch woman from the north of Ireland.^ She l)ecame
the mother of five sons, all of whom were officers in the
United States Navy. Two daughters married Captain
George W. Rogers and Dr. William Butler of the U. S.
Navy. Dr. Butler was the father of Senator Matthew Cal-
braith Butler, of South Carol int^ After the victory at
Lake Erie, some farmers in Rhode Island, you remember,
declared, such was the estimation in which they held this
woman, that it was " Mrs. Perry's victory."'"^
The furious battle at the Horse Shoe of the Tallapoosa
1 Christopher Raymond Perry, the father of Oliver Hazard Perry, met his
future wife when contiued as a prisoner of war atNewry, Ireland. She was a
granddaughter of "James Wallace, an officer in the Scotch army and a signer
of the Solemn League and Covenant" who " fled in 16G0 with others, from
County Ayr to the north of Ireland."— Our Naval Heroes, by D. C. Kelley, in
The Scotch-Irish in America, Fifth Congress, p. 115. See, also, *' Ancestry of
thirty-three Rhode Islanders," &c., by John Osborne Austin, under Perry.
•2 Our Naval Heroes, by D. C. Kelley, in Fifth Scotch-Irish Congress, pp. 114-
116. See Lossiug's Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812, Ch. 25.
31 •
River with the Creek Indians, March 27, 1814, brought to
the front General Sara Houston, a man of the Scotch-Irish
race of whom the country has heard much. Major-General
Andrew Jackson, another distinguished Scotch-Irishman,^
commanded in that battle. Jackson's father, also named
Andrew, came from Carrickfergus, on the north coast of
Ireland, in 1765. This battle, was a signal victory, and
soon after a treaty of peace was signed by which the hostile
Creeks lost the greater part of their territory. It is
unnecessary to speak of General Jackson's success at New
Orleans in January of the following year.
It must be stated, however, that General James Miller,
who won universal admiration by his gallant attack upon a
batter}^ at Luncly's Lane, July 25, 1814, was Scotch-Irish,
a native of Peterborough and out of the loins of London-
derry.^ It is he who was subsequently Collector of Cus-
toms at Salem for more than twenty years, and of whom
Hawthorne speaks so enthusiastically, calling him "New
England's most distinguished soldier."-^
Zachary Taylor, the popular hero of the Mexican war, is
generally reckoned as having been of Scotch-Irish extrac-
tion ; of that race, too, of course, was Matthew Calbraith
Perry, the brother of the victor of the battle of Lake Erie,
who ably assisted Scott as a naval commander at Vera
1 Amoug other places see Andrew Jackson, by D. C. Kelley, in Scotch-Irish
in America, Third Congress, p. 182. Andrew Jackson as a Pubh'c Man, by
William Graham Sumner (American Statesmen Series), Boston: 1SS2. James
Parton in his life of Andrew Jackson says (pp. 47 and 48, vol. 1) : "I may as
well remark here as anywhere, that the features and shape of head of General
Jackson, which ten thousand sign-boards have made familiar to the people of
the United States, are common in North Carolina and Tennessee. In the
course of a two mouths' tour in those States among the people of Scotch-Irish
descent, I saw more than twenty well-marked specimens of the long, slender
Jacksouian head, with the bushy, bristling hair, and the well known features."
2 See in History of the town of Peterborough, N. II., by Albert Smith,
V Genealogy and history of Pctei-borough families," p. 147. In the sketch of
General Miller in Smith's history is a letter to his wife liuth, written from Fort
Erie, July 2S, 1814, three days after the battle of Luudy's Lane.
3 *' The Custom House," introductory to the Scarlet Letter.
32
Cruz, and who afterwards organized and conducted with
marked success the well known expedition to Japan.
OiEcers and men of the Scotch-Irish race served in large
numbers on both sides in the late Civil War, but I cannot
stop to mention even the names of the most distinguished.
Mr. Campbell says " of the twenty-three Presidents of
the United States, the Scotch-Irish have contributed six —
Jackson, Polk, Taylor, Buchanan, Johnson, Arthur; the
Scotch three — Monroe, Grant, Hayes ; the Welsh one —
Jefferson ; and the Hollanders one — Van Buren. Garfield's
ancestors on his father's side came from England, but the
family line is traced back into Wales ; his mother was a
French Huguenot. Cleveland's mother was Irish ; Benja-
min Harrison's mother was Scotch."^ "The pedigrees of
Madison and Lincoln are doubtful."^
Six of the early settlers of the Scotch-Irish town of
Londonderry, or their descendants, writes Parker, "have
filled the gubernatorial chair of New Hampshire, namely,
Matthew Thornton, who was President of the Provincial
Congress, in 1775, Jeremiah Smith, Samuel Bell, John
Bell, Samuel Dinsmore, and Samuel Dinsmore, Jr."^
To these names must be added at least one more, namely,
that of our late associate, Governor and United States Sen-
ator, Charles Henry Bell, of Exeter, who was the third
chief magistrate of New Hampshire, bearing the surname of
the ancestor of the three, John Bell of Londonderry, N. H.
Our late associate John James Bell, grandson of Governor
Samuel Bell and son of Judge Samuel D. Bell, and Hon.
Luther V. Bell, formerly Superintendent of the McLean
Asylum, Somerville, Massachusetts, were also descendants
of John Bell of Londonderry.
1 Campbell, Vol. 2, p. 493. note.
- Ibid. The writer of this paper has not studied the pedigrees of the presi-
dents, but f^ives the statement made regarding the above as that of an in\ esti-
gator who, while not by any means free from mistakes, is pretty careful in re-
spect to assertions. The same remark should be made regarding some of the
other pedigrees contained in other extracts from Mr. Campbell's History.
3 Parker, p. 208.
33
The Kev. Dr. Joseph MacKean, first President of Bow-
doin College, was a native of Londonderry.^
The venerable Rev. Dr. John H. Morison, of Boston, is
of Scotch-Irish extraction and is descended from the father
of the first male child born in Londonderry. It is of him
that the story is told that after he had delivered an election
sermon before the New Hampshire legislature, and it had
been moved to print a certain number of copies of the dis-
course, a member rose and said that he would move that
additional copies be printed if the brogue of the preacher
could be reproduced.
Horace Greeley, according to Whitelaw Reid, was of
Scotch-Irish ancestry on both sides of his house.-
John Caldwell Calhoun, the great Southern statesman,
like his sturdy opponent, President Jackson, was of the
Scotch-Irish race,*' so were the great inventors, Robert
Fulton,"* Cyrus H. McCormick,^ and Samuel Finley Breese
1 His father, Jolm MacKean, was born April 13, 1715, at Biill3'mone_v, in the
County of Antrim, Ireland, and was about four years of age when his father
emigrated to this country.— Parker, p. 224.
'^^ee "Greeley, Horace," written by Whitelaw Eeid, in Appleton's Cyclo-
paedia of American Biography.
3 John C. Calhoun was the grandson of James Calhoun, who is said to have
emigrated from Donegal, Ireland, in 1733 (John C. Calhoun, by Dr. H. von Hoist,
p. S.) John C. Calhoun was the son of Patrick Calhoun, whom James Parton,
in his Famous Americans of Recent Times speaks of (pp. 117, llS) as a Scotch-
Irishman, who, with Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson, other Scotch-
Irishmen, ilhistrates well the " North of Ireland " character. Patrick Calhoun
was a Presbyterian like his father (J. Randolph Tucker, in article '"Calhoun,
John Caldwell " in Appleton's Cyclop;edia of American Biography). In 1770,
Patrick Calhoun (von Hoist, p. 8,) married Martha Caldwell, who, says John
S. Jenkins in his Life of John Caldwell Calhoun (p. 21), was a daughter of a
Scotch-Irish Presbyterian, who, according to Tucker, was an emigrant from
Ireland.
* " Robert Fulton was born in Little Britain, Lancaster Co., Pa., 17G5. He
was of respectable though not wealthy family. His father and mother were
of Scotch-Irish blood. Their families were supposed to be a part of the great
emigration from Ireland in 1730-31. The Fulton family were probably among
the early settlers of the town of Lancaster, as the father of Robert Fulton
was one of the founders of the Presbyterian Church of that place."— The
Inventors of the Scotch-Irish race, by J. H. Bryson, in The Scotch-Irish in
America, Fourth Congress, p. 175.
5 Scotch-Irish in America, First Congress, p. 101, Fourth Congress, p. 185.
3
34
Morse. The last named was the son of our late associate
Rev. Jedidiah Morse, and the great-grandson of Rev. Dr.
Samuel Finley, a Scotch-Irish President of Princeton^
College. The celebrated surgeon, Dr. D. Hayes Agnew,
was Scotch-Irish on both sides of his family. ^ Joseph
Henry was of Scotch descent.^ Alexander Graham Bell,
the inventor of the telephone, is a native of Scotland."*
In Canada the distinguished statesman Robert Baldwin
and a large portion of his associates in securing the estab-
lishment of the Dominion of Canada are stated to have
been of Scotch-Irish blood. ^
The versatile Sir Francis Hincks is said to have been of
the same blood. ^
It is interesting to know that our associate James Bryce,
the sympathetic and painstaking writer of the American
Commonwealth, is a grandson of a Presbyterian minister
of the north of Ireland and a Scotch-Irishman.'
1 The Scotch-Irish in America, Fourth Congress, p. 178.
2 Dr. D. Hayes Agnew, by Dr. J. Howe Adams, Fifth Scotch-Irish Congress,
p. 202.
3 " Both the father and mother of Joseph Henry came from the southwest
of Scotland, where the old family name was Hendrie. * * * the traditions
of the family on both sides and the lion on the coat of arms point back to Irish
ancestry of the highest rank; * * * he had a Scotch-Irish wife."— Pro-
fessor G. Macloskie in " Joseph Henry " in The Scotch-Irish in America,
Fifth Congress, p. 100.
•iThe mother of Tliomas A. Edison, who was Miss Elliott, is of Scotch-Irish
blood, says Dr. Bryson. — The Scotch-Irish in America, Fourth Congress,
p. 188.
5 The Scotch-Irish in Canada by Stuart Acheson, in The Scotch-Irish in
America, Third Congress, pp. 203 and 204. Dr. William Warren Baldwin, the
father of Robert Baldwin, took the degree of M.D. at Edinburgh. He came to
this country from a place near Cork, Ireland. Robert Baldwin was born in
Toronto in ISOi.— Cyclopiedia of Canadian Biography by George McLean Rose.
6 The Scotch-Irish in Canada by S. Aclieson, just referred to, p. 206. Sir
Francis Hincks was born in ^ork, Ireland, son of Thomas Dix Hincks, a
Presbyterian minister. The latter was born in Dublin and married Anne
Boult of Chester. He was a son of Edward Hincks (m. Dix) who moved
from Chester.— See Dictionary of National Biography, Appleton's Cycloptcdia
of American Biography and Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography just mentioned.
"Rev. James Bryce (1767-1857) went from Scotland, where he was born,
to Ireland, and settled in 1805, as minister of the anti-burgher church in
Killaig, Co. Londonderry. His son, James Bryce (1800-1877), was born in
35
The Scotch-Irish emigrants to this country were, gen-
erally speaking, men of splendid bodies and perfect diges-
tion. They were men, too, of marked mental characteristics,
which have impressed themselves on their posterity. They
were plain, industrious and frugal in their lives. It has
been said, such was their thrift, that Poor Richard himself
could have ffiven" them " no new lessons against wasteful-
ness and prodigality."^
But they had good intellectual powers and strong wills.
They were notable for practical sagacity and common sense,
and for tenacity of purpose. Conscious of their merits
they were self-reliant and always ready to assert themselves,
to defend their own rights and those of their neighbors,
and courageously push forward. Plain in speech, they
were not infrequently frank to the point of rudeness. With
energy and firmness, while often hard, they were affec-
tionate towards persons who conciliated them, hospitable
and faithful. Their sedateness was qualified by their wit
and humor.
The Scotch-Irish were led to come to this country, not
only by the desire to better their material condition and to
escape persecution, but by a spirit of daring.
As we have seen they took up their abode on our
frontiers and defended us from the depredations of Indians,
and did a large portion of the fighting required in our wars.
They were ardent promoters of civil and religious liberty'.
As was to be expected, these Scotch Calvinists breathed
the spirit of John Knox and contended fervently that the
final regulation of political action belongs to the people.
For many years, also, they had been fighting for religious
Killai;; (neai- Coleraine), In 1S4G, appointed to the Hinh School, Glasgow.
See Dictionary of National Biography, to which the information contained in
the article on the Bryces was furnished by the family. James Bryce, the
writer of the American Commonwealth, the son and grandson of the persons
just mentioned, was born in Belfast, Ireland, May 10th, 1838. His mother was
(or is) Margaret, eldest daughter of James Young, Esquire, of Abbey ville, Co.
Antrim.— See Men and Women of the Time, Thirteenth edition, 1891.
1 Governor Bell in " Londonderry Celebration," etc., pp. 23, 24.
36
liberty in Scotland and Ireland, and, taught by ecclesiasti-
cal and governmental oppression, had become the warmest
adherents of reb'gious liberty. The Scotch-Irish were a
devout and religious people, and constant and earnest Bible
readers. In many a home in this land they reproduced
the beautiful picture of domestic piety which has been
painted by the genius of the immortal Scottish poet.
Burns, in the Cotter's Saturday Night.
The Scotch-Irish, however, were never content with a
sentimental piety, but sought always with tremendous
earnestness, to place religion on a basis of knowledge and
thought. They were men, too, of high moral principle
and marked integrity. Another characteristic which never
failed to appear among settlements of this people, was a
mighty zeal for education. They were never content with
the lower grades of common schools, but demanded, every-
where, classical high schools, and later, colleges and uni-
versities. Look at the schools which they established in
Londonderry^ and other New Hampshire towns. In the
little town of Cherry Valley, in New York, they opened
the first classical school in the central and western portions
of that great State. ^ They seem to have furnished the
principal schoolmasters of all the provinces south of New
York, prior to the Eevolution, and it is noteworthy that a
large portion of the leaders in that great movement in the
lower Middle, and Southern States, received their educa-
tion under men of this race.^ From them they undoubt-
edly caught an ardent love of liberty and an increased glow
of patriotism.
Eeligion, virtue, and knowledge were three passions of
the Scotch-Irish. With them piety was never divorced
1 Parker, pp. 82, 83,119 et seq., 128.— Bell in "Londonderry Celebration,"
etc., p. 32.
2 76("rf.,pp. 105, lt»6.
3 What the Scotch-Irish liave done for Education, by G. Macloskie, in
Scotch-Irish in America, First Congress, pp. 90-101.— Campbell, Vol. II., p.
486, with the references to authorities cited.
37
from education, and religion, as stated before, was based
upon an intellectual foundation and what they believed to
be a basis of knowledge.
I began this paper by saying that the Puritan owed a
tribute to the Scotch-Irishman. There is much in common
between them, but I have not time to dwell upon the
resemblances in their characters and careers. They agreed
in their views of religious truth and duty, and in their
zeal and firmness in resisting civil and ecclesiastical domi-
nation. They were fellow sufferers for conscience' sake.
It has been claimed, and here I conclude, that the Scotch-
Irish in this country while eager to enjoy religious liberty
for themselves, have been ready to grant it to others, and
that in this respect they showed a better spirit than the
Puritans.
Was not the difference caused by time, however?
The Scotch-Irish came here a hundred years later than
the Puritans. Meanwhile the religious world had ffone
ahead and generally exercised a larger toleration.
&^
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
The Scotch-Irish in America. Proceedings of the Scotch-Irish Congress, at
Columbia, Tenn., May 8-11, 1889. Cincinnati : Robert Clark & Co., 1889.
— Proceedings and Addresses of the Second Congress, at Pittsburg, Pa.,
May 29 to June 1, 1890. Cincinnati : Robert Clarke & Co., 1890.
— Proceedings and Addresses of the Third Congress, at Louisville, Ky., May
14 to 17, 1891. Nashville, Tenn. : Publishing House of the Methodist
Episcopal Church Southj Barber & Smith, Agents.
— Proceedings and Addresses of the Fourth Congress, at Atlanta, Ga.,
April 28 to May 1, 1892. Nashville, Tenn. : Publishing House of the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church South, Barber & Smith, Agents.
— Proceedings and Addresses of the Fifth Congress, at Springfield, Ohio,
May 11 to 14, 1893. Nashville, Tenn. : Barber & Smith, Agents.
— Proce'edings and Addresses of the Sixth Congress, at Des Moines, Iowa,
June 7 to 10, 1894. Nashville, Tenn. : Barber & Smith, Agents.
These volumes of proceedings contain many papers of great value, and
relate to the history of tbe Scotch-Irish race before coming to America
and in this country.
In preparing the Report of the Council, I have made especial use of
" 'i he Scotch-Irish of the South," a paper in the first volume, by William
Wirt Henry, and considerable use of "The Making of the Ulsterman,"
by J. S. Macintosh; "The Scotch-Irish of New England," by Arthur L.
Perry, in the second volume; " The Scotch-Irish in Canada," by Stuart
Acheson, in the third; "The Inventors of the Scotch-Irish race," by
John H. Bryson, in the fourth; and "Our Naval Heroes," by D. C.
Kelly, in the fifth volume.
Professor Arthur L. Perry's paper, read at the Second Congress, has
been printed in pamphlet form. (Boston : printed by J. S. Cushing & Co.)
As printed in the proceedings, portions of this paper were cut out and
their places indicated by stars. These are given at length in the reprint.
/ Campbell, Douglas. " The Puritan in Holland, England and America." 2 v.
New York : Harper & Brothers, 1892.
The matter regarding the Scotch-Irish is to be found in the last chapter
of the second volume. That chapter, besides embodying much other
material, gives a very good summary of a large portion of the informa-
tion brought out in the first three Congresses of the Scotch-Irish, correct-
ing in some cases statements made in papers read in those meetings. I
have been much indebted to Mr. Campbell's chapter, but think that it
needs careful revision.
For a history of the Scotch-Irish before coming to America, see —
Froude, James Anthony. " The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Cent-
ury." 3 V. London, 1874.
39
Lecky, "W. E, H. "A History of England in the Eighteenth Century." 8 v.
New York, 1878-lSOO. London, 1878-1890.
Harrison, John. " The Scot in Ulster." Edinburgh and London, 1888.
The work of Mr. Harrison is a little volume which contains a valuable
epitome of the history of the Scotch-Irish in Ulster, from the beginning,
of the Seventeenth Century to the present time. It is founded upon the
best authorities, which appear to have been carefully consulted. I have
made free use of Mr, Harrison's statements in preparing the earlier por-
tions of ray paper.
The more important works referred to by Mr. Harrison are the following :—
Calendar of State Papers. Ireland, 1603.
Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, vol. 8.
The Montgomery Manuscripts. Belfast, 1869.
The Hamilton Manuscripts. Belfast, 1867.
State Papers of James VI. (Abbottsford Club.)
Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Glasgow, vols. 1630 to 1662.
Rushworth, John. Historical Collections, 1618 to 1648.
Eraser's Magazine, for article on Ulster and its people. July-Dec, 1876.
Reid, James. History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.
Thomson's Acts of Scottish Parliament.
Benn, George. History of Belfast.
Knox, Alexander. History of the County of Down. Dublin, 1875.
Hill, George. The Macdonuels of Antrim.
Hill, George. The Plantation in Ulster.
Gardiner's Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I., chaps. 15 and 16.
Balfour's Annals of Scotland.
Memorials of the troubles in Scotland. (Spalding Club.)
Turner, Sir James. Memoirs of his own life and time.
Prendergast's Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland.
Woodrow's History of the Suft'eriugs of the Church of Scotland.
Petty, Sir William. Political Survey of Ireland. London, 1719.
Leiand's History of Ireland.
Macpherson's History of Commerce.
Macaulay's History of England, Chapter 12 (Defence of Londonderry).
Walker's True account of the Siege of Londonderry. London, 1689.
Articles in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology.
Young, Arthur. A Tour in Ireland, made in the years 1776-'77-'78.
Other works on this period of Scotch-Irish history which may be examined
with advantage are —
Plowden, Francis. Historical Review of the state of Ireland. Phila., 1805-6.
5v. 8°.
Futhey, J. Smith. Historical discourse delivered on the 150th anniversary of
the Octorara church, Chester Co., Pa.
Long extracts from this address are given in Smith's " History of
Peterborough," to be found later on in this list.
In regard to the history of the Scotch-Irish in New England, besides the
paper of Professor Perry, it is desirable to refer to the following works : —
Maine.— Willis, William. The Scotch-Irish immigration to Maine, and Pres-
byterianism in New England (Article I. in Collections of the Maine Histori-
cal Society, Vol. VI., Portland).
40
New Hampshire. — State Papers of New Hampshire,— particularly " Towns,"
Vol. 14, aud " Muster Rolls," Yol. 2.
— Parker, Edward L. The History of Londonderry, comprising the towns
of Derry and Londonderry, N. H. Boston: Perkins & Whipple, 1S51.
I have made large use of the history of Parker and the paper of Willis
in preparing this paper.
— Smith, Albert. History of the town of Peterborough, Hillsborough
County, New Hampshire, etc. Boston : Press of George H. Ellis, 1876.
— Morrison, Leonard A. The History of Windham, N. H. Boston: Cupples,
Upham & Co., 1883.
—Belknap, Jeremy. History of New Hampshire.
— The Londonderry Celebration, Exercises on the 150th anniversary of the
settlement of Old Nutlield, June 10, 18G9. Compiled by Robert C. Mack.
Manchester: Published by John B. Clarke, 1870.
— Stark, Caleb. Memoir and official correspondence of General J. Stark, etc.
Concord, 1860.
— Addresses at the dedication of the monument erected to the memory of
Matthew Thornton, at Merrimack, N. H., September 29, 1892. Published
by authority of the State. Concord, N. H. ; The Republican Press Associ-
ation, 1894.
Vermont.— Thompson, Zadoc. History of Vermont, national, civil and sta-
tistical, in three parts.
Look in the Gazetteer of Vermont, which is part three of this work,
under such headings as " Londonderi-y," " Landgrove," etc.
— McKeen's History of Bradford, Vermont.
Massachusetts. TFb?'ces^e?'.— Records of the Proprietors of Worcester,
Massachusetts. Edited by Franklin P. Rice. In Collections of the
Worcester Society of Antiquity, Vol. III. Worcester, Mass. : Published
by the Society, 1881.
— Early records of the town of Worcester, 1722-1821. In Collections of the
Worcester Society of Antiquity, Vols. 2, 4, 8, 10, Part 1 of 11.
The Worcester Society of Antiquity will continue the publication of
the records of the town.
— Deeds at Registry of Deeds.
Worcester County was formed July 10, 1731. Deeds recorded before
that date can be consulted at the Registry of Deeds in Middlesex County,
at Cambridge, as Worcester belonged to Middlesex County before
Worcester County was formed.
—The records of births and deaths in Worcester.
— Worcester births, marriages and deaths. Compiled by Franklin P. Rice.
Part I— Births. Worcester, Mass.: The Worcester Society of Antiquity,
1894. In Collections of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, Vol. XII.,
Worcester, Mass. : Published by the Society, 1894.
—Inscriptions from the old Burial Grounds in Worcester, Massachusetts,
from 1727 to 1859, with biographical and historical notes. In Collections of
the Worcester Society of Antiquity, Vol. I.
— Lincoln, William. History of Worcester. Worcester: Moses D. Phillips
& Co., 1837.
with additions by Charles Hersey, 1862.
— Wall, Caleb A. Reminiscences of Worcester. Worcester, Mass. :
Printed by Tyler & Seagrave, 1877.
41
—Holland, Josiah Gilbert. History of Western Massachusetts, 2 v. Spring-
field: Published by Samuel Bowles & Co., 1855.
— Waldo Family. — New England Historical and Genealogical Register,
XVIII., 17G, 177.
Bridgman, Thomas. Inscriptions on monuments in King's Chapel
Burial Ground. Boston, 1853. pp. 292, 293.
Family Memorials by Edward E. Salisbury (p. 21) 1885. rrivately
printed.
—The Scotch-Irish in New England (George H. Smyth). In The Magazine
of American History, vol. 9, p. 153.
— Scotch-Irish in New England (W. Willis). In New England Historical
and Genealogical Register, 12; 231.
Canada. — Miller, Thomas. Historical and genealogical record of the first set-
tlers of Colchester County down to the present time. Halifax, Nova Scotia:
A. & W. MacKiulay, 1873.
—Patterson, George. A History of the County of Pictou, Nova Scotia.
Montreal : Dawson Brothers, 1877.
Proud, Robert. History of Pennsylvania, 1681-1742. Philadelphia: 1797-98.
2 V. 8°.
Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania. In New England Historical and Genealogical
Register, 16; 360.
Ramsay, David. History of South Carolina, 1670-1808. Charleston, 1809.
2 V. 8°.
—History of the American Revolution. Philadelphia, 1789. 2 v. 8°.
— History of the Revolution in South Carolina. Trenton, 1785. 2 v. 8°.
Baird, Robert. Religion in the United States of America. Glasgow and Lon-
don, 1844.
Craighead, J. G. Scotch and Irish Seeds in American Soil. Philadelphia:
Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1878.
Scotch-Irish (J. C. Linehan). In Granite Monthly, vol. 11.
Scotch-Irish. Granite Monthly, vol. 12.
Scotch-Irish in America (G. H. Smyth). In Magazine of American History,
4; 161.
McCulloch, Hugh. Men and measures of half a century. Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1888.
Appleton's Cyclopaxlia of American Biography, under the words '" Matthew
Thornton," " Asa Gray," etc.
APPENDIX.
Letters which followed the appearance of brief reports of the contents
of the foregoing paper in Boston newspapers.
The Boston Traveller, May 1, 1895.
SCOTCH-IRISH IN AMERICA.
Thomas Hamilton Murray criticises Samuel Swett Green's Essay upon
this subject.
To the Editor :
Lawrence, April 26.— I have just read a synopsis of the essay by
Samuel Swelt Green, A.M., on the Scotch-Irish, so called, in America.
The essay was delivered on April 2t, at a meeting in Boston of the
American Antiquarian Society.
While I have the greatest respect, personally, for Mr. Green, I am
obliged to impugn his reliability as an historian when he treats of the
" Scotch-Irish" shibboleth. I must also take issue with him both as
regards his premises and conclusions in the essay just mentioned. I do
this because both are fatally defective and based on radically false
assumptions. Mr. Green, beyond all question, intended to be accurate
and honest in his paper before the Antiquarian Society. His sources of
information, however, were misleading and unfortunate.
If I may take his paper as a criterion, he is not very well posted on
Irish history — ancient, mediisval or modern. Neither, taking the same
paper as a basis, does he appear to be well informed on the component
elements of the Irish people. Lacking the essential basic knowledge,
therefore, he has made a hodge-podge of the subject treated in endeav-
oring to prove too much.
This idea also seems to have struck Dr. Hale at the meeting in ques-
tion, who wondered if Mr. Gi'een claimed Columbus as Scotch-Irish.
The absurdity of some of the speaker's claims was also noted at the
meeting by that excellent historian. Prof. Jameson of Brown University.
Mr. Green, like most people who use the mistaken term " Scotch-
Irish," appears to do so under the supposition that it is synonymous
with Protestant-Irish. Not so. Thousands of Protestant-Irish are of
English descent, with not a drop of Scotch blood in their veins.- Other
thousands are of Huguenot extraction, a point with which Mr. Green
does not appear to have been acquainted. Welsh, German and Dutch
blood also enters materially into this Protestant-Irish element.
The number of Protestant- Irish of English descent who came to the
colonies, when compared with Protestant-Irish of possible Scotch
descent, was as 8 to 1, while the number of Keltic or Catholic Irish who
came at the same period was as 20 to 1. Yet, Mr. Green seems never to
have heard of either the Anglo-Irish or the Catholic Irish in the up-
building of New England.
The Irish immigrants to this country who were actually of Scottish
ancestry were at that time called, and were content to be called, merely
Irish. It remained for a later generation of "historians," unable to
suppress or deny the nationality of these comers, to dub them with what
was intended to be a palliating term, Scotch-Irish.
Mr. Green makes another blunder in regarding all Ulsterraen as of
Scotch descent. With him the fact that a man hailed from the northern
43
province is sufficient to stamp him as " Scotch-Irish." To any student
of Irish history the fallacy of this is at once evident. Why, some of the
most ancient blood in Ireland comes from Ulster, and at the time of the
English conquest thousands of Catholic Ulstermen were exiled and set-
tled all along the New England coast, from Maine to Connecticut.
These Mr. Green would no doubt calmly appropriate as " Scotch-Irish."
His assertion that the SuUivans, John and James, were of Scotch ex-
traction is so utterly nonsensical as not to merit a serious reply.
His claim that the Perrys were " Scotch-Irishmen" will make Rhode
Islanders laugh. The mother of the Perrys was content to be known as
a plain, everyday Irish woman. She was a daughter of an Irish rebel,
and was never guilty of using a "Scotch" or any other extenuating
prefix.
Mr. Green. would have us understand that emigration from Scotland
to Ireland commenced at the beginning of the 17th century. In this he
Is over a thousand years out of the way. Migration and emigration be-
tween the two countries b^an many centuries earlier than the 17th, or
when Scotland became an Irish crj[ony. When that was Mr. Green can
easily ascertain by giving the matter proper attention and careful inquiry.
Alluding to the Presbyterian Irish who settled at Worcester, Mr.
Green again rings the changes on the " Scotch-Irish," and says they
introduced the Irish potato. But to be consistent, why does he not call
it the Scotch-Irish potato ? Why let the Irish-Irish have the credit ?
In very truth this " Scotch-Irish" fad has become an unutterable bore.
While some Irish people of immediate or remote Scottish descent did
unquestionably come to these shores, not five per cent, of those claimed
as such by current writers were really of Scotch extraction. And these
were so hopelessly overwhelmed in numbers by other Irish who came,
that any attempt to claim exclusive merit for the handful, can only
result in mortification to the claimant.
The Protestant John Mitchell declares that " Scotch-Irish is a cant
term coined by bigots." He then goes on to state that in Ireland the
term was seldom or never heard.
A friend of mine, an Episcopalian, once said: " I notice that so long
as an Irishman goes to the Roman Catholic Church he is spoken of as
Irish ; but should he change his creed and frequent the Baptist or the
Methodist Church he is immediately referred to by his new friends as
' Scotch-Irish.' " This is a fair specimen of the shaky ground on which
the shibboleth rests.
Most Rev. Dr. Plunkett, Protestant archbishop of Dublin, speaking
on the " Scotch " and other prefixes, eloquently disapproves the same
and warmly declares : " In truth, we are simply Irish, and nothing else."
Thomas Hamilton Murray.
This letter also appeared in The Pilot, Boston, in the issue of May 11.
Following is a reply which was printed in The Pilot of June 15.
The same letter, substantially, had appeared in the Boston Traveller of
May 3, in answer to Mr. Murray's letter of May 1.
THE " SCOTCII-IRISH " AGAIN.
Editor of The Pilot :
WoRCESTEH, Mass., May 11, 1895. — A marked copy of The Pilot of
to-day has been sent to me, calling my attention to a communication from
Thomas Hamilton Murray, in which Mr. Murray criticises statements
which he supposes me to have made in a paper which I read before the
American Antiquarian Society recently, and opinions which he supposes
me to hold. He is laboring under misapprehensions as to my views.
Will you kindly allow me to correct some of these mistakes? They
44
arise mainly from the fact that Mr. Murray did not hear the paper read
and has not liad an opportunity to read it himself.
He writes: — "Thousands of Protestant-Irish are of English descent,
with not a drop of Scotch blood in their veins. Other thousands are of
Huguenot extraction, a point with which Mr. Green does not appear to
have been acquainted."
In my paper I stated that "William III. exerted himself to bring colo-
nies of Huguenots to the North of Ireland after the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. I mentioned also English colonists. I stated, too,
that the Irish who were of Scotch blood intermarried with those of
English-Puritan and Huguenot blood in Ireland. My subject, however,
was the Irish of Scotch blood.
Mr. Murray says: "Mr. Green seems never to have heard of either
the Anglo-Irish or the Catholic-Irish in the upbuilding of New Eng-
land." I am perfectly aware that both of these classes of Irishmen have
had great influence here, but, as stated before, I limited myself in the
paper to the influence of the Irish of Scotch descent.
Mr. Murray says : " The Irish immigrants to this country who were
actually of Scottish ancestry were at that time called, and were content
to be called, merely Irish."
I have not supposed that the Irish of Scottish blood were content to
be called "merely Irish." See, for example, the letter of Rev. James
McGregor, of Londonderry, N. H., to Governor Shute of Massachusetts,
as quoted by Jeremy Belknap, by Parker in his History of Londonderry,
N. H. (p. 68), and Lincoln in his History of Worcester, Mass. (p. 49.)
" Mr. Green makes another blunder," writes Mr. Murray, " in regard-
ing all Ulster-men as of Scotch descent."
I hold no such belief, but chose to single out the inhabitants of Ulster
of Scotch descent.
By reading a note appended to the names of General John Sullivan
and Govei'nor James Sullivan in my paper, Mr. Murray would see that I
agree with him in finding no reasons for believing that they had Scotch
blood. Am I wrong in believing that Miss Sarah Alexander, of Newry,
Ireland, who married the father of Oliver Hazard Perry, was the grand-
daughter of James Wallace, an officer of the Scotch army and a signer
of the Solemn League and Covenant, and that he fled in 1660 from
County Ayr to the North of Ireland? If I am, I should be grateful to
Mr. Murray if he would correct me.
Mr. Murray says, "Mr. Green would have us understand that emigra-
tion from Scotland to Ireland commenced at the beginning of the seven-
teenth century." I would not have anybody so understand, but, as I
stated at the beginning of my paper, I selected for treatment the emi-
gration during that century.
My old ^iend, Rev. Dr. Hale, expressed himself as much pleased with
my paper, and would be very much surprised to learn that he was under-
stood as disputing statements made by me because a jocose remark
occurred to him.
Professor Jameson, whom, with Mr. Murray, I regard as an " excellent
historian," took particular pains to say, at the meeting where my paper
was read, that he had no objections to make to any statements which I
had made, but had some doubt about the Scotch descent of one or more
of the persons mentioned in a quotation which I had made from the his-
tory of Douglas Campbell.
Remarks about the " Irish potato " were made by me in a letter which
I sent to you a week ago, and it is unnecessary for me to repeat here
what you already have in that letter.
In regard to my sources of information, which Mr. Murray thinks
were "misleading," I refer him to a somewhat long list of authorities
given at the close of my paper.
45
I do not imagine that Mr. Murray and I could agree entirely, but I am
sure that we agree more nearly than he has supposed, and that such an
approach to agreement would appear if he were to read my paper. I
hope that it will be printe ' in a few months; and when it is printed, he
can learn, if he wishes, exactly what I have written.
Samuel Swett Green.
The letter in which there were remarks about the Irish potato was
called out by the following paragraph in The Pilot of May 4 :
There is something appropriate in the claim made by Dr. S. S. Green,
of Worcester, before the American Antiquarian Society of Boston, on
April 24, that the " Irish potato " was introduced into Worcester, as
WL'll as into many other places in America, by the "Scotch-Irish." It
was just like the enterprising Scotch-Irishman to do that. He is the
only creature in the whole wide realm of fiction who would have
thought of "introducing" a vegetable to the land of its birth. Some-
body with time on his handstand a landaliie ambition to dispense the
information, should tell the American Antiquarian Society that the
potato is iudiaenous to America, and that the name " Irish potato" is
as much a sham and a misnomer as the other name, " Scotch-Irish,"
with this dlflerence, that the vegetable is a reial potato of American
origin, while the human hybrid is neither Scotch nor Irish.
Following is the letter, with comments as it appeared in The Pilot of
May 18.
THE "hush" potato.
Editor of The Pilot:
Worcester, Mass., May 4, 1895. — Will you kindly allow me to cor-
rect a mistake which was made by the writer of a paragraph in to-day's
issue of your paper, regarding a statement recently made by me in an
essay read before the American Antiquarian Society in Boston.
The writer does not understand how the potato could have been intro-
duced into Worcotcr and other places in this neighborhood dui'ing the
eighteenth century when it is indigenous to America.
There is no doubt that it is indigenous on this continent and no
doubt that it was carried from this country to Europe in the sixteenth
century. It is also true, however, that it. was introduced into Worces-
ter and other places in this country in the eighteenth century by
emigrants from the North of Ireland.
About 200 persons, who were a portion of a party of three or four
times that number which arrived in Boston, August 4, 1718, went to
Worcester, and were among its earlier settlers.
Most of this body of emigrants from the North of Ireland were of
Scotch extraction, as is well known. A few of them, however, were
of pure Irish blood. Of the latter was a family of Youngs who went
to Worcester. They are credited with the introduction of the potato
there. The people of Worcester knew little or nothing about that
vegetable before. Their ignorance is shown by an anecdote which
has come down to us and which is narrated in Lincoln's History of
Worcester.
After writing that " it is remarkable that the esculent, now considered
essentially necessary for table and farm should have been introduced at
a period so late," Lincoln continues: " It is related, that some of our
early inhabitants, after enjoying the hospitality of one of the Irish
famdies, were each presented with a few potatoes for planting. Unwill-
ing to give offence by refusing the present, thej' accepted the donation;
but suspecting the poisonous quality, they carried the roots only to the
46
nest swamp, and there threw them away, as unsafe to enter their
homes." (p. 49, note 2.)
Speaking of the portion of the emigrants from the Nortli of Ireland
who came over in 1718 and, with others of their countrymen who soon
joined them, settled at Londonderry, N. H., Parker, the historian
of that town, writes: "They introduced the culture of the potato,
which they brought with them from Ireland. Until their arrival, this
reliable vegetable, now regarded as one of the necessaries of life, if not
wholly unknown, was not cultivated in New England. To them belongs
the credit of its introduction to general use. Althongh highly prized
by this company of settlers, it was for a long time but little regarded by
their English neighbors, a barrel or two being considered a supply for a
family. But its value as food for man and for beast became at length
more generally known, and who can now estimate the full advantage of
its cultivation to this country! The following well-authenticated fact
will show how little known to the community at large the potato must
have been.
A few of the settlers had passed the winter previous to their establish-
ment here, in Andover, Mass. On taking their departure from one of
the families, Avith whom they had resided, they left a few potatoes for
seed. The potatoes were accordingly planted; some came up and
flourished well; blossomed and produced balls, which the family sup-
posed were the fruit to be eaten. They cooked the balls in various
ways, but could not make them palatable, and pronounced them unfit
for food. The next spring, while ploughing their garden, the plough
passed through where the potatoes had grown, and turned out some of
great size, by which means they discovered their mistake." (pp. 48
and 49.)
It appears natural after this statement of facts that the potato should
have been very generally called the Irish potato, in Worcester and else-
where.
I remember perfectly that in my boyhood, fifty years ago, and after-
wards when we had two kinds of potatoes on the table, in my father's
family, we were always asked whether we would have a sweet potato
or an Irish potato. The name is still used to a considerable extent.
Truly yours,
Samuel Swett Green.
[We make room, with pleasure, for Mr. Green's letter. It was only
in the interest of historical accuracy that we deprecated the use of the
term "Irish potato," as that esculent is a peculiarly American product;
and, as Mr. Green avows, it certainly is not a " Scotch-Irish " vegetable.
The introduction of the American potato into Ireland was, unhappily, a
Nessus-gift. The fatal facility of its culture led the people to place
unwise dependence upon it; so that when the "blight" of 1847 came,
they found themselves without other means of existence, and, as a con-
sequence, 1,225,000 human beings died of the " Great Famine" of that
year. It was a sad day for Ireland when it first knew the potato; but
if America has profited by its repatriation, give the credit to Irish, not
Scotch, Ireland. — Editor Pilot.
Mr. Murray continued the correspondence by sending the following
letter to the Worcester Telegravi, June 27, 1895.
To the Editor of The Telegram :
Samuel Swett Green, A. M., of Worcester, a short time ago read a
paper in Boston before the American Antiquarian Society. His subject
was the Scotch-Irish, so-called, among our early immigrants.
I took exceptions to many statements by Mr. Green as they were
reported in the Boston journals at the time, several days having elapsed
47
between the appearance of said reports and the publication of my
criticism.
As Mr. Green had not questioned the general accuracy of these news-
paper reviews of his essay, I was entirely justified in malting them the
basis of my objections. And this the more so, from the fact that the
different papers— the Globe, Journal and others — practically agreed in
their statement of the salient points.
Since then Mr. Green has replied, both in the Boston Traveller and the
Boston Pilot, to the adverse criticism I had advanced. I wish to ac-
knowledge at the outset the courteous language of his reply, and his
frank, honest method of discussing the subject with me. It is a pleas-
ure to have a disputant of Mr. Green's ability, character and good
nature. His calm, judicial mind is not Impervious to argument, nor
does he close his ears, because he may, perhaps, hear something that
runs counter to previously conceived ideas.
Mr. Green says: "I do not imagine that Mr. Murray and I coulct
agree entirely, but I am sure that we agree more nearly than he has sup-
posed, and that such an approach to agreement would appear if he were
to read my paper."
I am glad Mr. Green displays this conciliatory spirit of arbitration,
for it goes a great way toward a satisfactory discussion of the subject.
In answer to my criticisms he makes several important admissions,
viz. : (1) People from the north of Ireland are not necessarily of Scotch
descent. (2) Thousands of north of Ireland Protestants and thousands
of Protestants from other parts of Ireland have come to this country
who were not of Scottish ancestry. (3) The term Scotch-Irish is not
equivalent to that of Protestant-Irish. (4) The Catholic Irish have had
great influence here, before, during and since the revolution. (5) The
Sullivans, John and James, were not of Scottish ancestry. Several other
admissions are likewise made by Mr. Green, all of which bring us nearer
together in point of general agreement.
Mr. Green says in explanation of his paper that he limited himself to
"the Irish of Scotch descent."
Ah ! that is better. So long as he strictly adheres to it — not claiming
as of Scotch descent Irishmen who are not — just so long will he have
no contention. Eather do I praise him for his efforts in that respect.
Any writer who honestly aims to give any section of Irish settler's in
this country a deserved meed of praise shall always have my respect and
encouragement. It is only when Irish are claimed as of Scotch descent
who are not, or when exclusive merit is claimed for those who are, I
object. In this respect I think that Mr. Green will frankly admit that
my position is an entirely proper one.
No man of sense can properly object to the term "Irish of Scotch
descent," when rightly used, whereas the term " Scotch-Irish" is open
to very grave objections from many points of view. Mr. Green will, I
think, recognize the point.
We of the old Irish race draw no invidious distinctions, but receive
into brotherhood all born on Irish soil, or of Irish parents, regardless of
creed and no matter where their grandfather or great-grandfather may
have come from.
It is a fact, as no doubt- Mr. Green is aware, that thousands of north
of Ireland Catholics are of Scottish descent on one side or the other. It
is also true that many of the best friends of Irish nationality, autonomy
and independence have been of the same element, Protestant and Cath-
olic. But they were simply " Irish," look you. They weighted down
their birthright with no extenuating prefix or palliating affix.
It is a blunder to suppose that all the Irish settlers in New Hampshire
were of " Scottish descent." Many of the most prominent who located
48
there were not. Yet because some were, hasty writers have jumped to
the condusion that all were of Scotch ancestrj'. A more lamentable
error it would be difficult to fall into.
I stated in my first reply to Mr. Green tiiat the early Irish immigrants
to this country who were actually (and not by recent pretence) of
Scottish ancestry were content to be called merely Irish. Mr. Green
appears unwilling to admit this and quotes a letter of Rev. James
McGregor, of Londonderry, N. H., to Gov. Shute, of Massachusetts.
But while McGregor may have been unwilling to acl'inowledge himself
or his immediate associates as pure, unalloyed Irish, there is no real
evidence that the bulk of New Hampshire's Irish settlers agreed with
him. Lincoln, the Worcester historian, no matter how excellently
informed in other respects, cannot, to my mind, be recognized as an
authority on early Irish immigration. And this comment must also ap-
, ply to Dr. Hale and Prof. Jameson — both of whom are admirably posted
on other phases of New England history, but lamentably deficient in this.
Against McGregor, above mentioned, I place McSparran. Parson
McSparran, I need not tell Mr. Green, was an Irish Protestant clergy-
man who for nearly forty years (from 1721) was rector of St. Paul's
Church in Narragansett. Although of Scottish ancestry and partly edu-
cated in Scotland, he never spoke of himself as " Scotch-Irish." Yet if
the term were ever justifiable, it would have been so in his case. The
expression " Scotch-Irish " never occurs in McSparran's writings. He
always alludes to himself as "Irish," as being an "Irishman," and as
able to speak, read and write "the Irish language." He was proud of
his Irish nationality, and while not loving the land of his ancestors less,
admired that of his nativity more.
McSparran in his quaint work, American Dissected, thus speaks of
early New Hampshire settlers :
" In this province lies that town called London-Derry, all Irish, and
famed for industry and riches."
Leaving New Hampshire, he continues :
"Next you enter Main (e), which, in its civil government, is annexed
to the Massachusetts, as Sagadahock also is, and both rather by use than
right. In these two eastern provinces many Irish are settled, and many
have been ruined by the French Indians."
No mention of "Scotch-Irish," you will notice! Yet McSparran
was in close touch with his countrymen throughout New England.
Again he writes :
"It is pretty true to observe of the Irish, that those who come here
with any wealth are the worse for their removal, though doubtless the
next generation will not suffer so much as their fathers; but those who,
Avheu they came, had nothing to lose, have throve greatly by their
labors."
Again, referring to Pennsylvania, he says : " By the accessions of the
Irish and Germans, they threaten, in a few years, to lessen the Ameri-
can demands for Irish and other European linens."
Speaking of Maryland, McSparran declares " There are some Quakers
here * * * ami some Irish Presbyterians, owing to the swarms
that, for many years past, have winged their way westward out of the
great Hibernian hive."
Referring to Pennsylvania, he writes: "The Irish are numerous in
this province, who, besides their interspersions among the English and
others, have peopled a whole county by themselves, called the county
of Donegal, with many other new out-towns and districts."
McSparran gives absolutely no indication that he ever heard of the
" Scotch-Irish" term. Certainly he never used it personally. His
family, education and good sense placed him above such a cowardly
49
subterfuge. A short time before liis death he forwarded his diplomas
of master and doctor to a cousin in Ireland, requesting that they be
registered in the parish registry of Dungiven "so that my relatives in
time to come might be able to speak of me with authority." Thus he
marked for all time his identity as an Irishman.
The colonial records repeatedly mention the "Irish," not the Scotch-
Irish. Cotton Mather in a sermon in 1700 says: "At length it was
proposed that a colony of Irish might be sent over to check the. growth
of this countrey." No prefix there. The party of immigrants remaining
at Falmouth, IVIe., over winter, and which later settled in Londonderry,
N. H., were alluded to in the records of the general court as "poor Irish."
On St. Patrick's day, 1700, Irish of Portsmouth, N. H., instituted
St. Patrick's lodge of Masons. Pretty good proof that they were con-
tent to be called merely " Irish." Later we tind Stark's rangers at Fort
Edward requesting an extra supply of grog so as to properly observe
the anniversary of St. Patrick. Very little comfort here for your
"Scotch-Irish" theorist.
Rev. John Moorhead, a Presbyterian minister of Boston, was born in
the north of Ireland and received much of his education in Scotland.
Yet he wished to be regarded as mere "Irish." In proof of this he
joined the Charitable Irish Society of Boston in 1730, and made an ad-
dress on that occasion. Only men of Irish birth or exti-action could be
admitted to actual membership in the society then as now. Mr. Moor-
head in being thus admitted so acknowledged himself. His congregation
is described by Drake, Condon, CuUen and other authorities, as being
composed of " Irish Presbyterians."
No mention whatever is made of any " Scotch-Irish " in the neighbor-
hood.
Marmion's maritime ports of Ireland states that "Irish families"
settled Londonderry, N. H. Spencer declares that "the manufacture
of linen was considerably increased by the coming of Irish immigrants."
In 1723, says Condon, "a colony of Irish settled in Maine." Mooi-e, in
his sketch of Concord, N. H., pays tribute to the "Irish settlers" in
that section of New England. McGee speaks of " the Irish settlement
of Belfast," Me. The same author likewise declares that " Irish families
also settled early at Palmer and Worcester, Mass." Cullen describes
the arrival at Boston in 1717 of Capt. Robert Temple, " with a number
of Irish Protestants." Capt. Temple was, in 1740, elected to the Chari-
table Irish Society. In another place Cullen alludes to "the Irish
spinners and weavers who landed in Boston in the earlier part of the
18th century."
Many persons who continually sing the praises of the so-called
" Scotch-Irish " stand in serious danger of being considered not only
Ignorant but positively dishonest. Their practice is to select any or all
Irishmen who have attained eminence in American public life, lump
them together and label the lump " Scotch-Irish."
Among those who have been thus wrongly claimed are Carroll, Sulli-
van, Knox, Moylan, Wayne, Barry, Clinton, Montgomery, Elliott, Hand
and a host of others. Of a later period, Jackson, Calhoun, Meade and
Sheridan have been ridiculously styled " Scotch-Irish." The late John
Boyle O'Reilly has not yet been so styled, but no doubt will be after he
has been dead long enough to make it comparatively safe.
Of the revolutionary heroes mentioned above, Charles Carroll was of
old Irish stock. His cousin, John Carroll, was a Roman Catholic clergy-
man, a Jesuit, a patriot, a bishop and archbishop. Daniel Carroll was
another sterling patriot.
The SuUivans, James and John, were also of ancient Irish stock, the
name having been O'Sullivan even in their father's time.
4
50
Gen. Knox and his father were both members of the Charitable Irish
Society of Boston. The general also belonged to the Friendly Sons of
St. Patrick, Philadelphia.
Moylan was a brother of the Roman Catholic bishop of Cork. Quickly
would he have repudiated the term " Scotch-Irish."
Wayne was of Irish descent and proud of his Irish lineage. There is
abundant evidence of this did space allow me to present it. He was an
active member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.
Barry was an Irish Roman Catholic. It was he who, when met by an
English frigate on the high seas, replied to the commander's demand as
to who he was, with "The United States ship Alliance, saucy Jack
Barry, half Irishman, half Yankee — Who are you?"
The Clintons, George and James, were sons of a county Longford
Irishman, who with a large family immigrated from Ireland in 172'J.
Montgomery was an Irishman by birth and patriotism, and a native
of county Donegal. His father was a member of the Irish parliament.
Brig. -Gen. Elliott was a member of the Charitable Irish Society of
Boston, and at one time its president.
Hand was a native of Kings county, Ireland, and served in France
with the Irish brigade. During our revolution he attained the rank of
brigadier-general, and was a great favorite with Washington.
All the foregoing would have laughed had any attempt been made in
their lifetime to tag them " Scotch-Irish."
Mr. Green asks : "Am I wrong in believing that Miss Sarah Alexan-
der of Newry, Ireland, who married the father of Oliver Hazard Perry,
was the grandaughter of James Wallace, an officer in the Scotch army
and a signer of the Solemn League and Covenant, and that he fled in
1660 from county Ayr to the north of Ii-eland? If I am, should be
gratified to Mr. Murray if he would correct me."
No general correction is necessary. Miss Alexander's grandfather,
at least on the paternal side, was Scotch. But what of it? Sarah, his
grandaughter, was an Irish woman — Irish by birth, education, sympathy
and association. Would Mr. Green consider himself the less an Ameri-
can because his grandfather happened to be English or Irish or Scotch?
Certainly not! He cannot, therefore, apply the law of nationality in
his own case and refuse its application in that of Sarah Alexander. A
man of his clear sense and logical mind will not, I am sure, after think-
ing it over, have any desire to do so.
Prejudiced or poorly informed writers have made sad work of this
" Scotch-Irish " business. Thus Henry Cabot Lodge gives the absurd
definition of "Scotch-Irish" as being "Protestant in religion and
chiefly Scotch and English in blood." This has only been equalled in
absurdity by Dr. Mcintosh, who defined this elusive element as " not
Scotch nor Irish, but rather British." Here we have two gentlemen
claiming to speak as with authority, yet unable to agree even in first
essentials. What an excellent farce, indeed, is all this.
Probably no man in recent years has done more to shatter the "Scotch-
Irish" fallacy than Hon. John C. Linehan, the present state insurance
commissioner of New Hampshire. His vast researches and able articles
relative to the early settlers justly entitle him to be considered the his-
torian of the Irish in the Granite state. His recent contributions on
"How the Irish came as builders of the nation" contain amass of
priceless information regarding the Irish pioneers in Londonderry,
Antrim, Dublin and other New Hampshire places.
Returning to the Charitable Irish Society, it should be stated that all
the founders were Protestants — chiefly Presbyterians. Some of them
were from the North of Ireland and may have had Scottish forefathers.
But whether they had or not, all wished to be considered as simply
51
"Irish." Had they desired to be considered "Scotch rather than
Irish," they would have joined the Scotcli Charitable Society— wliich
was already in existence in Boston. But no! They wanted a distinc-
tively Irish organization, and consequently founded one on St. Patricli's
day, 1737. You will particularly note that they named it the Charitable
Irish Society and not the Charitable Scotch-Irish Society. Indeed, they
make no use at any time of the latter hyphenated expression.
We admire the upright, sturdy Irishman; we have respect for the
genuine Scotchman. But for the man who through ignorance or asso-
ciation is ashamed of his native land, and who represents himself as
something he is not, we have only pity and contempt in about equal
parts. The most sincere Orangeman I ever knew never dreamt of
denying that he was an Irishman. With the mass of his countrymen he
did not agree in religion or politics. But he knew, as they did, that
these matters were separate, apart and distinct from his nativity or
nationality.
But enough ! Truth only is permanent. False assumptions, mistaken
theories or deliberate misrepresentation may create for a time a certain
impression. In the end, however, cold, stern, unrelenting fact will
always prevail.
Thomas Hamilton Murray.
Lawrence, Mass., June 26, 1895.
The foregoing letter also appeared in the Boston Herald of June 28.
The following reply was printed in the Worcester Daily Telegram of
June 28. It was cut out from a copy of the Telegram and sent to the
Boston Herald, but was not printed by that paper.
To the Editor of The Telegram :—
A very courteous letter appeared in this morning's Telegram from
Thomas Hamilton Murray of Lawrence, in continuance of a corre-
spondence regarding statements made by me in a paper read at the
semi-annual meeting of the American Antiquarian Society, held in
Boston the 24th of April last. Please allow me to say a few words in
reply.
As no part of the correspondence has appeared in a Worcester paper,
in so far as I know, I can best introduce the whole subject by askiug
you to print the following letter, which appeared in the Boston Pilot,
June 15, in answer to a letter which was printed in the Pilot of May 11,
and which had appeared before in the Boston Traveller of May 1. A
reply from me appeared in the Traveller May 3. The reply in the Pilot,
although written May 11, was delayed in its appearance until June 15.
Here followed Mr. Green's first reply to Mr. Murray. The second
letter went on as follows :
It appears from this letter that what Mr. Murray calls " admissions "
were denials that I had made certain statements and held views which
he supposed me to hold.* Mr. Murray gives reasons and extracts to
show that the Irish of Scotch descent who came here in the 17th
century were content to be called " merely Irish."
Now, I have no doubt that to a very considerable extent they asso-
ciated with other Irishmen, and especially with Presbyterians from the
North of Ireland, not of Scotch extraction, and I know that the name
Irish was frequently applied to men of Scotch blood who had lived in
* A misprint. I wrote " denials that I had made certain statements which
he had supposed me to make and that I held views which he had supposed me
to hold."
52
Ireland.* iBut there was strong feeling, too, between many of the
Catholic and Protestant Irish, which began when the Scotch went to
the North of Ireland in large numbers in the earlier parts of the 17th
century) and* which was intensified by the troubles in 1688 between
James II. and William III. There was a prejudice in this country, too,
regarding the Irish.
It is believed in Worcester that one of the reasons why the settlers
from the North of Ireland who came here in 1718 were cruelly treated,
was that they were victims of that prejudice. Rev. Mr. McGregor's
letter probably represented the views of many emigrants from the
North of Ireland, on being termed " merely Irish."
Last May I received a letter from Hon. Leonard A. Morrison of
Cauobie Lake, N. H., in which he wrote: "I am one of Scotch-Irish
blood, and my ancestors came with Hev. Mr. McGregor of Londonderry,
and neither they nor any of their descendants were willing to be called
' merely Irish.' I have twice visited the parish of Aghedovvary,"* county
Londonderry, from which they came in Ireland, and all that locality is
filled, not with Irish, but with Scotch-Irish, and this is pure Scotch
blood to-day, after more than 200 years. I can show you families here
of as pure Scotch blood as you can find in the lowlands of Scotland,
where there has never been a marriage with any but those of Scotch
blood."
Mr. Morrison is the author of the History of Windham and several
other books in which he has to deal largely with Irish of Scotch descent.
I am not writing in a polemical spirit, but simply as a student of history,
and it seems to me as such that a large portion of the emigrants from
the North of Ireland in the 17th century were as proud of their Scottish
descent as emigrants from Ireland of the last 50 years are proud of
their Irish descent.
I do not understand why the late William Lincoln should not be
trusted when he writes about the earlier settlers in Worcester from
the North of Ireland. About 200 of the immigrants who reached
Boston in August, 1718, from the North of Ireland came to Worcester.
That number was as great probably as the population found here when
they came. The new comers were, therefore, an important portion of
the population of Worcester, whose history Mr. Lincoln wrote in such
manner that his work holds a high place among town histories. He
spoke of the colony of persons who came here in 1718 from the North
of Ireland as " Scots." It seems to me that Jeremy Belknap, Rev. Mr.
McGregor, and Messrs. Morrison and Lincoln may be trusted in regard
to representations made by them respecting bodies of men among whose
descendants they were living and about whom they had prepared them-
selves to write.
In regard to the use of the term Scotch-Irish, I did not realize that I
should give offence by employing it, and I probably should have used
some other designation to convey my meaning rather than irritate bodies
of men whom I respect. I used the word, however, only in a descrip-
tive sense, just as I sometimes use the terms Afro-American and Swed-
ish-American. I entirely agree with Mr. Murray that, generally speak-
ing, it is best not to use words which show the diflerences of the
inhabitants of a country rather than the things which they hold in com-
mon. For example, it is better to speak generally of Americans, rather
than Irish-Americans or French-Americans.
Still men must make themselves understood in writing, and it is some-
times very convenient for purposes of description to place an adjective
indicative of blood before the name denoting nationality. Thus, upon
* Misprint for Aghadowey.
53
taking up a newspaper this morning, which recognizes in the highest
degree the services of our fellow citizens of Irish blood, I fonnd it
speaking for descriptive purposes of " Irish-Americans." . ,
Mr. Murray asks : " Would Mr. Green consider himself less an Amer-
ican because his grandfather hai)pened to be English or Irish o'r Scotch?"
"Certainly not," * is his answer. Still if one of my grandfathers had been
a Scotchman I do not think that I should be troubled, if I showed Scotch
characteristics, should my acquaintances speak of me as a Scotch-Amer-
ican. It so happens that one of my grandmothers, Nancy Barber, was
a descendant of one of the early settlers in Worcester of Scotch extrac-
tion. I have so little of her blood in my veins, however, that I suppose
that nobody would think of calling me either an Irishman or Scotchman
or Scotclj-American. I think that I should preserve my equanimity
were either of the three designations applied to me.
Mr. Murray speaks of the inconsistent definitions which are given by
authors to the term Scotch-Irish. In so far as I am concerned, I gave
my own definition on the first page of my paper, as follows : "The
Scotch-Irish, as I understand the meaning of the term, are Scotchmen
who emigrated to Ireland and such descendants of those emigrants as
had not, through intermarriage with the Irish proper, or others, lost
their Scotch characteristics. Both emigrants and their descendants, if
they remained long in Ireland, experienced certain changes, apart from
those which are brought about by mixture of blood, through the influ-
ence of new surroundings."
Mr. Murray speaks of the mistakes which have been made in ascrib-
ing Scotch blood to distinguished Irishmen. Of the persons named by
liim I have not claimed Scotch extraction for Carroll, Sullivan, Moylan,
Wayne, Barry, Elliott, Hand, Meade or Sheridan. Nor do I expect to
claim it for my friend, the late John Boyle O'Reilly, nor for my corres-
pondent, and I think I may add, my friend, Mr. Murray, for either he or
a predecessor on the Lawrence American has praised highly my methods
of library management, still I must add that the Christian name " Ham-
ilton " is a little suspicious. It has a Scotch look, and I am inclined to
think that my friend may be related to Lord Dufferin, the descendant of
the Nobleman Hamilton, who led a colony of Scotchmen into Ireland in
James the first's time.
In regard to Knox, Clinton, Montgomery, Jackson and Calhoun, I
must ask Mr. Murray to consider the testimony brought forward in the
notes to my paper. Mr. Murray will be glad to hear that I have referred
to some of Mr. Linehan's writings in the list of sources of information
at the end of my paper. f I will try to add, if not too late. Parson
McSparran's work. J
I do not find it easy to reconcile Mr. Murray's statements regarding
Rev. Dr. Hale and Prof. Jameson. In his letter in the Traveller and Pilot,
in speaking of me as " lacking the essential basic knowledge" and so as
* I inserted the word " as" before " is." The omission in printing led Mr.
Murray, it will be seen, to suppose that I had avoided a direct answer to a ques-
tion which he asked.
t Honorable John C. Linehan, Insurance Commissioner of the State of New
Hampshire, has written several papers on the Scotch-Irish. He is of Irish
blood and objects strenuously to the use of the term " Scotch-Irish," I wrote
to him for a list of his writings in order that I might priat it here. He could
not give me one, but wrote that he expects to make a collection, in pamphlet
form, of his papers, on the general subject under consideration and have it
printed the coming autumn (1895).
J For a reprint of America Dissected, by Rev. J. McSparran, I). D., see an
appendix to History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island,
by Wilkius Updike. New York, 18i7.
*4
54
having " made a hodge-podge of the subject treated in endeavoring to
prove too much," he wrote : " This idea also seems to have struck Dr.
Hale at the meeting in question. * * The absurdity of some of the
speaker's claims was also aoted at the meeting by that excellent histo-
rian, Prof. Jameson of Brown University." In the letter in this morn-
ing's Telegram Mr. Murray, after saying that Lincoln cannot be " recog-
nized as an authority on early Irish immigration," goes on to say :
"And this comment must also apply to Dr. Hale and Prof. Jameson, both
of whom are admirably posted on other phases of New England history,
but lamentably deficient in this." Why the change in the e.'^timate of
these two men ? Is it because they supported me in my views instead
of opposing me ?
Dr. Hale has wide interests and, I presume, knows much about Ireland
and Scotland, and the Scotch wiio settled in Ireland. Prof. Jameson
intimated at the meetins of the American Antiquarian Society at which
ray paper was read, that he was descended from an Irishman of Scotch
extraction. He seemed, too, to be interested in the subject of my paper,
and to have knowledge regarding it.
Yours truly,
Samuel Swett Green.
Mr. Murray wrote again to the Worcester Daily Telegram. This letter
was in the paper of July 8.
To the Editor of The Telegram :—
Samuel Swett Green in your issue of the 28th ult., replies to my
communication of a day or two previous anent the "Scotch-Irish," so
called.
I take exceptions to certain points advanced by him in his latest con-
tribution, as I have to others which he had previously brought forward.
Still, there is so much in his present reply in the nature of concession
to my position, that our bone of contention is being rapidly reduced to
a minimum. This is practically the outcome Mr. Green indicated would
result as soon as we got together and compared views and notes. In
his latest reply Mr. Green thus manfully writes : —
" In regard to the use of the term Scotch-Irish, I did not realize that
I should give offence by employing it, and I probably should have used
some other designation to convey my meaning rather than irritate
bodies of men whom I respect. I used the word, however, only in a
descriptive sense, just as I sometimes use the terms Afro-American and
Swedish-American. I entirely agree with Mr. Murray that, generally
speaking, it is best not to use words which show the differences of the
inhabitants of a country rather than the things which they hold in com-
mon. For example, it is better to speak generally of Americans, rather
than Irish-Americans or French-Americans."
After this candid admission very little remains to be said. So much
of what I have been contending for is comprised in it that a vast
amount of debris has been cleared away, thus enabling us to survey the
field to better advantage.
The ten'dency nowadays among Americans of Irish extraction, is to
drop the prefix Irish, and it is well that this is so. No more patriotic
Americans can be found than those of immediate or remote Irish
descent. And this has been so from the beginning. Ten years ago I
wrote in the Boston Globe on the staff of which I was at the lime, that
it was in bad taste to insist on hampering an American on every possi-
ble occasion, with the prefix "Irish" or "German" or "French" or
" Scotch." With as much or as little sense might the late Robert C.
Winthrop be spoken of as an " English-American," or the Knickerbocker
element in New York continue to be labelled " Dutch- Americans."
55
But the principle heroin fnntaiiicd is not of recent conception. The
bullv of the most profjre.st.ive aud highly educated people in Ireland of
Scottish descent, have for centuries held lilie sentiments. In their
own estimation they were " Irish" and wished to he so regarded. The
evidence on this point is so overwhelmingly abundant that it seems a
waste of time to dwell upon it. A few there were, no doubt, who were
ashamed of tlieir Irish nationality just as we liave in our country to-day
a certain class of wretched Anglo-maniacs who, despising their birth-
right, can admire nothing save what is English.
Tliese patriotic Irish of Scotch descent, mentioned above, objected to
being loaded doAvn with a foreign prefix on the same principle that we
Americans object to similar hyphenated terms. And they were right as
we are fight. What then must be thought of people to-day in this
country who persistently label themselves Scotch-Irish or Scotch-Irish-
Americans? Very little that is complimentary, I am sure.
Mr. Green quotes Hon. Leonard A. Morrison of Canobie Lake, N. H.,
who boasts that even after 200 years residence in Ireland his family
still remained aliens. I pity the man who would make such a boast.
At the same time, I can hardly suppress a smile at Mr. Morrison's break-
neck anxiety to get away from the awful suspicion that he may be con-
sidered "merely Irish." But he is handicapped at the outset. His
name — Morrisoq^— is deplorably Irish. In fact, few names can trace a
longer pure Irish pedigree than his. The Morrison families, too, were
proud ones among the old Irish nobility. The stem goes back to a
period anterior even to the Irish colonization of Scotland. If Mr.
Morrison wants pedigree and ancestral glory he will stick to Ireland.
Still there is no accounting for tastes, and if he wishes to cut loose
from the ancient Irish stock, we, who glory in that stock, will make no
effort to detain him.
Hon. John C. Linehan, the historian of the Irish in New Hampshire,
and now Insurance Commissioner of the State, thus writes: —
" In these latter days a new school of writer's has sprung up, whose
pride of ancestry outstrips their knowledge, and whose prejudices
blind their love of truth. With the difference in religion between cer-
tain sections of the Irish people as a basis, they are bent in creating a
a new race, christening it ' Scotch-Irish,' labormg hard to prove that it
is a ' brand ' superior to either of the two old types, and while clinging
to the Scotch root, claim that their ancestors were different from the
Irish in blood, morals, language and religion. This is a question not
difficult to settle for those who are disposed to treat it honestly, but, as
a rule, the writers who are the most prolific, as well as the speakers who
are the most eloquent, know the least about the suljject, and care less,
if they can only succeed in having their theories accepted. The Irish
origin of the Scots is studiously avoided by nearly all the Scotch-Irish
writers, or if mentioned at all, is spoken of in a manner which leaves
the reader to infer that the Scots had made a mistake in selecting their
ancestors, and it was the duty of their descendants, so far as it lay in
their power, to rectify the error.
What a vast difference there is between the contracted spirit shown
by Mr. Morrison, and the love for Ireland and the Irish which the
great, big hearted Dr. McSparran displayed. What a difference, too,
betw^een Mr. Morrison, who tries to avoid kindred with the pure, unal-
loyed Irish, and Gen. John McNeil, another descendant of a London-
derry settler, who in 1830, joined the Charitable Irish Society, thus
wishing to identify himself with the Sons of Hibernia.
In my previous letter to The Telegram alluding to Parson McSpar-
ran's work, the types made me say 'Americans Dissected," it should
be " America Dissected." Also when referring to St. Patrick's lodge
56
of Masons, the date should have been 1770 and not 1700, as it appeared
in print.
Commissioner Linehan says in spealiing of the Irish arrivals in
Worcester: "Rev. Edward Fitzgerald (a Scotch name in no sense
whatever) was the first pastor of the Presbyterian clmrch in Worces-
ter, in 1718. His congregation had rather a sorry time of it trying to
establisli themselves in the Heart of the Commonwealth. The margin
between the Congregational and Presbyterian churches was narrow,
but the former widened it by tearing down the church of the new-
comers, not leaving the timber, even, on the ground. . . John Young
came to Worcester in 1718, from Ireland, with his family. The town
historian, Lincoln, wrote that the ' Scotch-Irish ' were accompanied by
a few of ihe native Irish, and mentions Young as one of them; and that
he was the first man to introduce the cultivation of the potato in
Worcester. Here is a concession the mere Irish ought to be thankful for
— that there were even a few came; but it certainly is queer that their
Boston brethren persisted in calling themselves Irish, notwithstanding
they were as Protestant as the Worcester or New Hampshire people of
the same period."
Why anybody of Irish birth or descent should try to sink his glorious
heritage and seek to establish himself as " Scotch rather than Irish," is
something I cannot understand. Ireland possesses a far more ancient
civilization than either Scotland or England. Her hagiology, her edu-
cational institutions, her old nobility, her code of laws, her jurispru-
dence, are of much greater antiquity. "The Irish," declares Collins,
"colonized Scotland, gave to it a name, a literature and a language,
gave it a hundred songs and gave it Christianity." For additional
evidence on this point see Knight, Lingard, Chambers, Lecky, "Vener-
able Bede, Buckle, Pinkerton, Logan, Thebaud, Sir Henry Maine and
other authors.
Mr. Joseph Smith, an Irish Protestant of Lowell, Mass., in a letter to
the Pilot in September, 1892, alluding to a writer who dwells upon the
" Scotch-Irish," says : —
"I object as an Irishman and a Protestant to having my race and
religion misrepresented, and I most vigorously protest against a
Scotchman's posing as the mouthpiece and defender of Irish Protes-
tanism. The Irish Protestants need no defender; they have always
been amply able to take care of themselves, and they have always been
honorably prominent in the efl'orts to ameliorate the condition of their
country and give it a strong nationality in which the question of relig-
ious faith should be merely incidental and unimportant. Irish Protes-
tants are Irish, and they never had and never needed Scotch aid to fight
their battles. . . .
". . . My people have lived in Ulster for hundreds of years, but we
were never stigmatized as Scotch-Irish. We of Ulster, Protestant and
Catholic, are Irish, pure and simple; and Irish nationality, undiluted by
Scotch vinegar or British water, is quite good enough for us. The
strength of the movement of '83 was in Ulster ; the United Irish Society
was formed in Ulster, and it was Irish, with no use whatever for Scotch
ideas or allies I, as an Irishman of Ulster blood and Protes-
tant religion, stoutly scorn this man and his Scotch-Irish rubbish. I
am an Irishman, pure and simple, and I protest with vigor against my
religion being used to deprive me of my nationality by this self-elected
missionary. I utterly repudiate him and all his kind, and array myself
under the standard of Grattan and Emmet and Parnell, and take a glori-
ous pride in remembering that innumerable movements for Irish nation-
ality against English misrule has been captained by Irish Protestants."
Mr. Green inthnates that he is going to claim President Jackson as
57
Irish of the prefix variety. Surely Mr. Green cannot be acquainted with
the origin of the Irish Jacksons— the name coiiiinii clown througli the
centuries from the old Milesian stock. President JacksoA himself was
assuredly not afflicted with the " Scotch-Irish" heresy. Read his ad-
dress at Boston, in June, 1833, to the Charitable Irish Society. On that
occasion President Boyd of the Society, a Protestant, said, addressing
Jackson: " Irishmen have never been backward in giving support to
the institutions of this country, nor in showing due respect to the chief
magistrate thereof; but when the highest office is hela by the sou of au
Irishman, we must be allowed to indulge in some feelings of pride as
well as patriotism."
To this President Jackson responded : " I feel much gratified, sir, at
this testimony of respect shown me by the Charitable Irish Society of
this city. It is with great pleasure that I see so many of the country-
men of my father assembled on this occasion. I have always been proud
of my ancestry and of being descended from that noble race, and rejoice
that I am so closely allied to a country which has so much to recommend
it to the good wishes of the world. Would to God, sir, that Irishmen
on the other side of the great water enjoyed the comforts, happiness and
liberty they enjoy here. I am well aware, sir, that Irishmen have never
been Ijackward in giving their support to the cause of liberty. They
have fought, sir, for this country valiantly, and I have no doubt would
fight again were it necessary, but I hope it will be long before the insti-
tutions of our country need support of that kind. Accept my best wishes
for the happiness of you all." (See records of the Society).
How the spirit of old Pat Calhoun must groan when certain writers
traduce his memory by holding his son up and apart as " Scotch-Irish."
In his lifetime he surely never dreamt it would come to this.
A few years since the Protestant Archbishop Plunkett of Ireland, in
addressing some Presbyterian visitors, said: "I hope that while we
shall always be very proud of our imperial nationality ; proud of our con-
nection with the British empire, on the history of which, as Irishmen,
we have shed some lustre in the past, and from our connection with
which we have derived much advantage in return, — while we are proud,
I say, of our imperial nationality, let us never be forgetful of our Irish
nationality. We may be descended from different races — the Danes,
Celts, Saxons, and Scots — but we form a combined stratum of our own,
and tliat is Irish, and nothing else."
I cannot better extend this communication than by reproducing an
extract from my original reply to Mr. Green, published in the Boston
Traveller: An Episcopalian friend once said to me: "I notice that so
long as an Irishman in this country goes to the Roman Catholic church,
he is spoken of as Irisli; but should he change his creed and frequent
the Baptist or the Methodist church, he is immediately referred to by
his new friends as " Scotch-Irish." This is a fair specimen of the shaky
ground on which the shibboleth rests.
Touching upon the subject of Sarah Alexander, mother of the hero of
Lake Erie, I ask Mr. Green if he would consider himself any the less an
American because his grandfather happened to be English or Irish or
Scotch? He avoids a direct answer to this, and good-naturedly brushes
the question aside. So I must repeat it.
Mr. Green facetiously remarks that he might be able to establish a
few Scottish ancestors for myself. I think not. The Murrays (Irish,
O'Muiredhaigh) are in origin Irish of the Irish. They trace descent
back many centuries and at different periods have been dynasts in Cork,
Meath, Derry, Mayo and other districts. They are kin to the
O'Mahoneys, McCarthys and other historic Irish septs. So you see,
Mr. Green, how hopeless your task would be.
58
Speaking of the name borne by my correspondent, I have known
sturdy, full-blooded Irishmen, right from Cork and Galway, who were
named both Green and Greene. Did time allow, perhaps I could trace
Irish descent on the part of the distinguished librarian. I am sure he
would be pleased to have me do so.
As I stated in a former letter, this "Scotch-Irish" fad has, in very
truth, become an unutterable bore. While some Irish people of imme-
diate or remote Scottish descent did unquestionably come to these
shores, not five per cent, qf those claimed as such by current writers
were really of Scotch extraction. And these were so hopelessly over-
whelmed in numbers by other Irish who came that any attempt to claim
exclusive merit for the handful can only result in mortification to the
claimant.
The part the Irish — the "mere Irish" — took in our revolutionary
war is safely recorded in American history. "You have lost America'
by the Irish!" exclaimed Lord Mouutjoy (1783) in the British parlia-
ment. Loyalist Galloway when questioned in the Commons as to the
composition of our patriot army, replied: "I can answer the question
with precision. They were scarcely one-fourth natives of America,
about one-half Irish, the other fourth English and Scotch." Ramsey
declares " the Irish in America were almost to a man on the side of
independence," and Plovvden says that many of the successes of the
patriots " were immediately owing to the vigorous exertions and prow-
ess of the Irish emigrants who bore arms in that cause."
The precious " Scotch-Irish " of modern times had not yet eventuated,
it would appear. I cannot close this letter more appropriately than by
quoting the tribute of Washington's adopted son, G. W. P. Custis, who
thus speaks of the plain, every day Irish :- -
"Then honored be the old and good services of the sons of Erin in
the war of independence. Let the shamrock be entwined with the
laurels of the revolution, and truth and justice guiding the pen of
history inscribe on the tablets of America's remembrance, eternal
gratitude to Irishmen."
Thomas Hamilton Murray.
Lawrence, Mass., July 6, 1895.
The correspondence closed with the following letter from Mr. Green
in The Worcester Daily Telegram of July 9, 1895 :
To the Editor of The Telegram :—
Mr. Murray in his rejoinder, this morning, to my reply to his recent
communication, says that after a certain statement which I had made
in the reply, which he quotes, and, in his use of our language, calls an
" admission," " very little remains to be said."
He will therefore excuse me if, with a great deal of work crowding
on me, I answer his last letter briefly, and, without agreeing with or
disputing the assertions made by him regarding the general subject of
what he would call the Scotch-Irish myth, merely reply to a question to
which h.e says I avoided " a direct answer," and write a few words in
defence of Hon. Leonard A. Morrison.
Mr. Murray writes: "I ask Mr. Green if he would consider himself
any the less an American because his grandfather happened to be English
or Irish or Scotch."
I had supposed that I had made my answer clear, but, as I do not
seem to have been understood, I state distinctly that, under the circum-
stances mentioned, I should not consider myself any the less an
American.
I will add that, under the same circumstances, I should feel at perfect
liberty, did I so choose, to call myself an English-American, Irish-
59
American or a Scotch- American, and that I do not believe I should
resent it if my friends and acquaintances spoke of me in that way. It
is natural and pleasant for many Americans to have the love which they
bear the lands of their birth or of their ancestors recognized by an
appropriate adjective before the name of the beloved country to which
they now belong.
Mr. Murray seems to think that Mr. Morrison and all other persons
■who choose to be known as Scotch-Irish are ashamed of the name
Irish.
Is that true ? I am sure it is not.
If they wish to avoid being known as Irishmen, why do they not call
themselves Scotchmen? Many of them I am sure, feel that while they
retained the characteristics of Scotchmen, while living in Ireland, they
also gained much by coming in contact with the people of Ireland.
Mr. Morrison is a student of the history of the North of Ireland, and
is very proud of being descended from ancestors who lived there. He
knows, of course, as do Mr. Linehan and I, that, according to the old
traditions, emigrants from Ireland settled Scotland and gave it its
name. But he believes, and I believe, that the mixture of races, as they
were to be found in the lowlands of Scotland, frpm which the large
colonies went into Ireland in the 17th century, was very different from
the mixture of races to be found among the Irish of the same period.
Mr. Linehan would probably deny this statement, but I think that peo-
ple generally who have read of Scotchmen and Irishmen, or who have
come in contact with them, believe that the two races differed widely
during the century under consideration, and that the differences in race
characteristics which showed themselves then are very obvious now.
Samuel Swett Green.
l2 Harvard street, July 8, 1895.
e
1\
30